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MEYRIGKT DEPOSm 



THE HEART OF 
A SOLDIER 



BY 

LAUCHLAN MACLEAN WATT 

CHAPLAIN TO THE FORCES 
GORDON HIGHLANDERS AND BLACK WATCH 
AUTHOR OF "IN THE LAND OF WAR," "THE 

SOLDIER'S FRIEND." ETC. 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



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COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


JUN -6iyi8 


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©Cf,A497647 


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^WXi 1 







I DEDICATE THESE PAGES 
TO ALL MY DEAR FRIENDS 

IN THE GORDONS AND THE BLACK WATCH 
WITH WHOM I SPENT MEMORABLE DAYS 



JSihcn the Boys coinc Marching Rome 

There's a drum-tap waiting to awake the world 

To a wide-flung welcome cry; 
And a wind that will go where the clouds hang low, 

To uplift and blow them by. 
A fresh dawn breaks along the wave-wet shore, 

And a glad light tips the foam: 
And to heaven all lands raise hearts and hands 

When the boys come marching home. 

They went far away when Freedom called — 

Brave lads! with hearts of song! 
They've been through the Valley where the shadows lie. 

In the grey years, grim and long. 
They'll return as men to the love they left, 

Not again through wars to roam, 
For wrong shall be buried in its grave in hell 

When the boys come marching home. 

There are some that will look through blinding tears 

As the ranks go swinging by; 
And some that will welcome the face they love 

With a laugh that kills a sigh. 
Ah, hearts that wait by Sorrow's gate, — 

Though their dust lies in the loam, 
The souls of your dead are riding ahead 

When the boys come marching home. 

O brave, who bear for us wounds and pain 

In vigils dark and cold, 
God bring you back o'er the homeward track, 

For our world is growing old. 
There's never an hour that steals away 

But our soul seeks heaven's high dome. 
And our hearts grow sore for your face once more 

When the boys come marching home! 



FOREWORD 

This is not necessarily a parson's book, 
though written by a Padre. 

I leave others to write of battles and hor- 
rors. I wish to shew, from inner knowl- 
edge, the lives of the men, and what they 
really are like, out in the circumstances of 
war, away from home. 

I think it is suitable that America should 
see what this war makes for men. It is a 
great time for us all. I remember a man 
in my own country who one day hung out 
on his flag pole the Union Jack and the 
Stars and Stripes sewn together. Some- 
body said to him, "That is a stupid flag. It 
is too heavy. There is no wind that blows 
which will carry it." But the only wind 
that ever really could blow that flag straight 
out before the nations is the wind that is 
blowing now — the wind that would blow 
liberty out of the earth. And we believe 
these two flags shall never be unknit so long 



viii FOREWORD 

as that wind threatens the freedom which is 
the birthright of every soul, — which no man 
gave us, and which no man shall ever take 
from us, till we lie dead at the feet of the 
great sacrifice for freedom's sake. 

I have had close association with the men, 
first with my bagpipes for companion, 
through the Camps in 1914-15. I have told 
of that time in my Land of War. There- 
after I was three months in one of the sad- 
dest hospitals in France, up at the Advanced 
Base ; then with the Gordon Highlanders at 
the Somme, the Ancre, and the trenches 
above Armentieres; and latterly, with the 
Black Watch at Ypres and in the famous 
Salient. So I think I have had plentiful op- 
portunities of learning what is in the sol- 
dier's heart; and he has taught me much of 
what is in my own. 

I crossed first, to France on Christmas 
Eve, 19 1 4, in the troopship City of Benares, 
with a crowd of London lads. And it was 
an unforgettable crossing. 

Christmas Eve on the waters, far from 
home — and on the way to unknown trials — 
their hearts full of the thoughts of the dear 
women and children precious beyond expres- 
sion of words — how wonderful it was! A 



FOREVv^ORD ix 

silver mist lay along the face of the deep, 
and the night was full of glamour and witch- 
ery. The soul was ready for mystery. And 
it received it. For, about midnight, just 
when we were thinking of the faces in the 
firelight, a strange thing swam into our ken. 
A great ship, like a ship that men saw of old 
in ballad times, — like a ship of stars, illumed 
with innumerable lamps, came sailing across 
our track. The men leapt to their feet and 
crowded to the side. ''What ship is that?" 
they whispered. And as it came on out of 
the silver mystery of the dim night we saw 
its name spelt out in shining lights. It was 
the beloved Asturias, the hospital ship; and 
on its side, touched into pathetic beauty, was 
emblazoned the great Cross, red as with 
the blood of Christ's immortal love, the sym- 
bol of pity for the suffering and the sad. It 
was like Christ Himself, walking the wa- 
ters, carrying in His bosom, home, the 
stricken and the wounded, out of the Land 
of War, whose shores ourselves were seek- 
ing. And when it had passed, and faded 
from our sight across the sea, we lay down 
to our rest, touched into peace as though by 
contact with a vision of the divine. 

A Chaplain's life is not, as so many think. 



X FOREWORD 

a thing of services. It is rather a thing of 
service. He is not, if he be a true man, 
what has been suggested with a sneer — an 
anaemic imitation officer with a clerical col- 
lar on. He has to be the comrade of all, 
friend of the weary, helper of the weak, and 
light-bringer in the dark hour. He may be 
mess-president, leader and sharer of quip 
and crank at the officers' tables, and pur- 
veyor of amusements in the camp, but if his 
work stop there, it is not half begun. In the 
hour of peace and the hour of strife, in the 
day of ease and the day of labour, he must 
be, with officer and private, a man's man, 
because he is Christ's man. The Chaplain 
who cannot stoop because he remembers that 
he is captain or major or what not, is never 
of much use. He must remember the com- 
radeship implied by the cross on his collar, 
which speaks of the Cross which he carries 
in his heart. Most have remembered that, 
and many have worn their wounds like roses 
as they have gone right home, with the boys, 
all the road, by the way of sacrifice. 

The Chaplain need never fear that his 
position as an officer will be overlooked. 
Nor need he ever fear that his office will be 
forgotten. He will find himself, soon, the 



FOREWORD xi 

keeper of the soldier's heart, the confidant 
of the most intimate secrets of the brave, 
the friend of all the faithful. He touches 
the soldiers' life all round, in hospital, in 
camp, on the march, and in the trenches. 
In their weariness he must never be weary. 
In the cold and in the mire he must keep 
their hearts warm by the fire that is burn- 
ing in his own. And when the parapets 
are falling in, he has to show himself un- 
afraid — a quiet witness to the courage of 
the faith he preaches. For the men are like 
children. They have intuitional tests, hav- 
ing been touched by great ideals of manli- 
ness and service. I hope the world may 
prove worthy of their sacrifice, lest that 
which ought to be so full of value for the 
future may be allowed to wither, in the day 
of the returning. 

In the sorrow and cloud of war, when I 
remembered those who had gone before, I 
often found comfort in the thought of the 
ancient story of my Celtic people, who 
dreamed of Tir nan og — the land of youth. 
The brave boys who, in their fair young 
manhood, have passed through the door of 
pain for our sakes, have gone thither to 
abide in unchanging beauty. They shall 



^i FOREWORD 

know no age and decay like us. But, where 
all the brave who have triumphed stand to- 
day, they shall await the unfolding of final 
things. And surely it is best. 

Life, out at the front, is not all a thing of 
sighing. We have laughter as well as sor- 
row — laughter that does not slam the door 
on thought of higher things, and thought of 
tender things and holy which does not close 
the curtain on lightest laughter, without 
which our very souls should perish. And 
our good-bye is always 

"Cheeri-oh!" 

I^AUCHLAN MACLEAN WATT. 





CONTENTS 










CHAPTER 


PAGE 


I 


In Hospital Tents 17 


II 


"Blighty" .... 








25 


III 


The Spirit of Pain 








39 


IV 


Up the Line 








50 


V 


Trek and Trench 








64 


VI 


Meetings and Partings 








74 


VII 


The Soldier's Religion 








93 


VIII 


The Meaning of Things 








108 


IX 


Officers and Men 








119 


X 


Bullet and Shell 








132 


XI 


Links with Home . 








147 


XII 


A Ruined World . . 








159 


XIII 


Ypres 








174 


XIV 


In the Salient . . 








187 


XV 


The Boys .... 








197 


XVI 


Laughter and Tears 








209 


XVII 


The Prince 








222 


XVIII 


Sons of the Manse . 








229 



XIV 


CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 




PAGE 


XIX 


The Spiritual Future . 


• . 236 



XX After the War — What? . , . 245 

POEMS 

When the Boys Come Marching Home . vi 

Blighty 37 

In the Highlands 91 

The Lark in the Sky . 145 

The Boys 257 



THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 



THE HEART OF A 
SOLDIER 



IN HOSPITAL TENTS 

Out in the Land of War we sometimes 
feel very far from those we love; and then, 
as though we had walked somehow right 
through reality, our thoughts are lifted 
oversea, and the mirage of home floats like 
a dream before us. The magic stop is 
touched in many ways. Little do the brave 
lads speaking to us in camp or hospital know 
how often they have brought us underneath 
its spell. 

In a tent where the wounded lay, I was 
beside the bed of a fine young Scottish sol- 
dier, stricken down in the prime of his man- 
hood, yet full of hope. The thought of the 
faces far away was always with him up- 
holdingly. In fact, the whole tent seemed vi- 

17 



18 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

brant with the expectation of the journey- 
across the narrow strip of blue which sun- 
ders us from home. This Scottish youth 
had been talking, and it was all about what 
to-morrow held for him. His mother, and 
the girl that was to share life with him — 
these were foremost in his thought. His 
face shone as he whispered, ''I'm going 
home soon." Everything would be all right 
then. What a welcome would be his, what 
stories would be told by the fireside in the 
summer evenings ! But he made the greater 
journey that very night. We buried him 
two days later, where the crosses, with pre- 
cious names upon them, are growing thick 
together. Surely that is a place most holy. 
There will be a rare parade there, on Judg- 
ment Day, of the finest youth and truest 
chivalry of Britain and of France. Soft 
be their sleep till that Revally ! 

We got the pipe-major of a famous High- 
land regiment to come over; and when the 
brave dust was lowered, while a little group 
of bronzed and kilted men stood round the 
grave, he played the old wail of the sor- 
row of our people, Lochaber no more. I 
heard it last when I stood in the rain be- 
side my mother's grave; and there can be 



IN HOSPITAL TENTS 19 

nothing more deeply moving for the High- 
land heart. The sigh of the waves along 
Hebridean shores called to me there, among 
the graves in France. 

The men who lie in this hospital are those 
who could not be carried farther meanwhile, 
and they have been dropped here, in pass- 
ing, to hover between life and death until 
they make a move on one side or other of 
the Great Divide. So it is a place where 
uncertainty takes her seat beside the bed 
of the sufferer, watching with ever unshut 
eye the fluctuating levels of the tide of des- 
tiny. It is a place where the meaning of 
war gets branded deep upon you. The 
merest glimpse solemnizes. Of course, the 
young may forget, for the scars of youth 
heal easily. But the middle age of our gen- 
eration will certainly carry to the grave the 
remembrance of this awful passion of a 
world. 

Here, of course, you meet all kinds of 
men from everywhere. They were not 
forced to come, except by duty, in their coun- 
try's need. They were willing in the day of 
sacrifice, and theirs is that glory deathless. 

One has been burned severely. How he 
escaped at all is a miracle. But they are 



20 THE HEART, OF A SOLDIER 

all children of miracle. Death's pursuing 
hand seems just to have slipped off some, 
as he clutched at them. This man looks 
through eye-holes in his bandages. He is 
an Irishman, and the Irish do take heavy 
hurts with a patient optimism wonderful to 
see. 

There is also a fine little Welshman, quite 
a lad, who has lost his leg. He has been 
suffering continually in the limb that is not 
there. To-day he was lying out in the sun, 
and he looked up cheerily at me. "Last 
night," said he, "for about half an hour, I 
had no pain. I tell you I lay still, and held 
my breath. It was so good, I scarcely could 
believe it. I thought my heart would never 
beat again, at the wonder of it." 

The usual picture postcard of the family 
is always close at hand. One North of Ire- 
land man, up out of bed for the first time, 
was very full-hearted about his "missis and 
the childer." Said he, with pride, "She's 
doin' extra well. She's as brave as the best 
of them, and good as the red gold — that's 
what she is!" 

Another poor fellow, in terrible pain, 
asked me to search in a little cotton bag 
which was beside him for the photograph 



IN HOSPITAL TENTS 211 

of his wife and himself and the little baby. 
"It was took just when I joined/' he whis- 
pered. "Baby's only two months old there." 

One day those who were able were out- 
side, and a gramophone was throatily grind- 
ing the melody out of familiar tunes, with 
a peculiarly mesmeric effect. Suddenly the 
record was changed to Mary of Argyle. 
The Scotsman by whose bed I was stand- 
ing said, "Wheesht! D'ye hear yon? Man, 
is it no fine?" And the tears ran down his 
cheeks as he listened. It was a poor enough 
record. In ordinary times he would have 
shouted his condemnation of it. But he 
was now in a foreign land — a stricken, suf- 
fering man. And it made him think of some 
woman far away beside the River Forth, 
where he came from. And his heart asked 
no further question. 

At the head of the bed of some of them 
you will see a blue paper. "You're looking 
grand to-day," said I to a young fellow. 
And he replied, "Is there anny wonder, sir, 
wid that scrap o' paper there?" For it 
was the order for home on the first avail- 
able opportunity. "Sure, won't the ould 
mother be glad to see me?" he continued. 
"The sunshine here is beautiful, but sun- 



22 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

shine in the ould country is worth the 
world." 

"Good-bye, sir!" they sometimes cry. 
"I'll be away when you come round again." 
But perhaps next time a sad face looks up 
at you, for the day so eagerly anticipated 
has been again postponed. 

It is always home, and what the dear ones 
there are like, and what they will be think- 
ing yonder, that fills up the quiet hours to- 
wards restoration, as it strengthened the 
heart and arm of the brave in the hour of 
terrible conflict. 

The endurance, patience, and courage of 
the men are beyond praise — as marvellous 
as their sufferings. I can never forget one 
who lay moaning a kind of chant of pain — 
to prevent himself screaming, as he said. 

Last night we had a very beautiful expe- 
rience. We were searching for a man on 
most important business, but as the wrong 
address had been given, that part of it ended 
in a wild-goose chase. Nevertheless we were 
brought into contact with a real bit of won- 
der. It was an exquisite night. The moon, 
big, warm, and round as a harvest moon at 
home, hung low near the dreaming world. 
The trees stood still and ghost-like, and the 



IN HOSPITAL TENTS 23 

river ran through a picture of breathless 
beauty. We had got away beyond houses, 
and were climbing up through a great far- 
stretching glade. The road before us was 
a trellis of shadow and moonlight. Sud- 
denly we had to stand and listen. It was 
the nightingale. How indescribably glori- 
ous! The note of inquiry, repeated and re- 
peated, like a searching sadness; and then 
the liquid golden stream of other-world 
song. How wonderfully peaceful the night 
lay all around — the very moonlight seemed 
to soften in the listening. And yet again 
came the question with the sob in it; and 
then the cry of the heart running over. 

The valley lay lapped in luminous haze, 
a lake somewhere shining. But there was 
no other sound, no motion, no sign of life 
anywhere — only ourselves standing in that 
shadowy glade, and that song of the be- 
ginnings of the world's sadness, yearning, 
and delight, somewhere in the thicket near. 

It was difficult to believe that we were 
in a land of war — that not far from us lay 
ruined towns of ancient story — that the 
same moonlight, so flooded with delight for 
us, was falling on the uninterred, the suf- 
fering, and the dying, and the graves where 



24 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

brave dust was buried. It was all very beau- 
tiful. And yet, somehow, it made me weary. 
For I could not help thinking of the boy we 
had laid down to rest, so far from home, 
and the piper playing Lochaher no more 
over his grave. And of the regiment we 
had seen that very day, marching in full 
equipment, with the pipers at the head of 
the column, so soon to be separated from 
the peat fires and the dear ones, more widely 
than by sundering seas. And we hated war. 
God recompense the cruel ones who loosened 
that bloody curse from among the old-time 
sorrows which were sleeping, to afflict again 
the world! 



II 

"BLIGHTY" 

We had a great clearance out of hospital 
last week. The weather had been dull, with 
lashing rain; and in the tents it was just 
like being at sea, with the canvas flapping 
and straining, and the wind whistling about 
the cordage. But suddenly everything was 
changed. Birds sang in the hedgerows, and 
light and laughter were in the hearts of the 
boys in the wards. 

"What's wrong to-day, Sister?" I asked. 
And she replied, ''There's nothing wrong, 
Padre. Everything is just all right this 
morning. The boys are on the move for 
Blighty!" 

That is the odd word, of Oriental origin, 
used out here for "Home." The British 
soldier, as he has moved from bivouac to 
bivouac, has emerged from his campaign- 
ings with a curiously miscellaneous vocabu- 
lary sticking to him, like the mud out of 

25 



26 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the trenches, or the dust out of the deserts, 
in every land where he has been Hving and 
fighting. A vocabulary of soldiers' slang 
would be an interesting addition to our dic- 
tionaries. It will, in fact, have to be con- 
sidered by lexicographers. A man who 
was fighting in Flanders over a year ago 
was gathering it up for me, when a bullet 
in his spine suspended his labour. I hope, 
for his own sake, as well as for the sake 
of philology, that it may be resumed soon. 
The atmosphere of the wards was elec- 
tric. And of course "Blighty" was the 
secret. And, when I remembered the boy 
from "Zoomerzet," and the man from the 
"Coomberland" hills, and the Welsh lads, 
as well as our own Scottish fellows, I could 
very easily interpret the dreams and hopes 
which were making their hearts beat faster. 
I could see the little white-washed cottages 
with the hedges green about them — the blue 
smoke lingering along the mossy ridges in 
the land they loved — the woman at the door 
watching for the advent of the postman, 
lagging always when love waits. I could 
hear the drowsy mill-wheel turning, in 
Sleepy Hollows far away, with the plash of 
cool water falling as it turned, and the bleat 



"BLIGHTY" 27 

of sheep, and the call of shepherds to their 
dogs, about the Kirkstone Pass and in the 
Highland glens. And I knew, too, that 
there were dingy streets and stairs in big 
towns and cities at home, which were trans- 
figured, with a glamour born of longing, 
in the hearts that were turned seawards now 
by the thought of ''Blighty." 

Only a few faces were dowie. One man, 
with something like the gleam of tears be- 
hind his eyes, said, ''My day is coming, 
too, of course; but I'd rather wait a little 
longer, till I'm strong enough to go." Yet 
you could feel the touch of argument in 
his speech. And his arm, outstretched in 
splints and the great hump in the bed- 
clothes about his feet, told of limbs that 
would take some mending, and a long wait 
still, ere the happy day came round for his 
marching orders. 

In one tent the "character," whom we 
may call Macfarlane, was sleeping very 
quietly. Sister said, "Tell him, just for 
fun, when he wakes, that he isn't going." 

As I got along to his bedside he opened 
his eyes. "Hullo, sir," said he; "I'm for 
Blighty the day." 

"Oh, Mac," I replied, "they've altered the 



28 THE HEART OF 'A SOLDIER 

order. You'll have to dream of Glasgow a 
few times yet." 

He looked at me incredulously for a 
moment, and then he asked, "Whit wey?" 

'Well, you see," I explained, "the author- 
ities don't think it would be safe to let a 
Macfarlane loose in Glasgow, unless there 
was a minister along with him." 

But he shook his shaggy head, and cried, 
with a laugh, "Hoots, I dinna care what 
they think. I ken fine I'm gaun, for a' 
that. And, if ye don't believe't, look under 
my bed, and ye'll see my new breeks. I've 
looked at them often enough mysel' to ken 
they're there." 

It was the same in all the wards. The 
new kit was laid out ready. The word was 
"Blighty," and it had gone the round. And 
in a little while they all were getting 
ready. 

It was difficult sometimes to understand 
on what principles the garments had been 
served out. For instance, a lad with one 
leg was looking, with a queer grimace, at 
a pair of socks. "They 'ave been kind to 
me!" said he. "They must mean it for a 
change on the journey. Sure enough, I feel 
my toes twitching in the foot at the end of 



"BLIGHTY" 29 

the leg wot ain't there, but I'm blowed if I 
thought I'd see a stocking for it, too." 

Another was sitting up in bed, clothed 
in the very tightest grey shirt I ever saw 
upon a man. He was glancing round with 
a very funny grin. ''I dunno how I got 
into it," said he. "And Lor' only knows 
how I'll get out of it if they give me any- 
thing to eat on the voyage over." 

Others who had already dressed were 
lying, tired out with the effort, waiting very 
quietly for the departure; while some were 
busy stowing away, in the little cotton bag 
which they carry with them, all their scanty 
treasures — the picture postcard, the pocket 
Testament, and odds and ends as souvenirs 
of their experience of the war. 

The talk was all, of course, about the 
coming joys. *'I think I see the kiddies 
already," said one. "Who cares for a finger 
or two, or a leg, at that, when we'll be seeing 
the old land soon?" And more than one 
would say, "Let me loose at the slackers 
when I get over yonder. My game leg 
itches to be at them, if the War Office would 
only give me the job." 

It is an experience well worth having, 
just to see the train, going off with the 



30 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

broken boys for home. It is worth while 
working hard among them, to win the 
sunny smile of good-bye as you touch their 
hands and wish them God-speed in their 
journey. 

This is, naturally, a land of surprises. 
You meet men gathered out of every- 
where; and things and places you had long 
forgotten are revived by the contact. At 
the close of a service one man said, "Do ye 
mind yon nicht when you were at North 
Berwick speaking aboot Robbie Burns? I 
was there." I remembered it well, and the 
quiet walk to the station, and the voice of 
the sea, blown over the streets, in the dark. 
Another said, "I'm an elder at so-and-so. 
My minister kens you fine." On another 
occasion, just as I entered a hut to have 
a service, a young fellow walked up to me, 
held out his hand, and said, "Well, how's 
good old St. Stephen's getting along?" I 
thought I heard the solemn bell of the home 
church ring then. And once, when I was 
seeing off a troop train up the line, a sun- 
burned soldier shouted, "I used to steal 
aipples oot o' your manse yaird at Turra 
langsyne. They were gweed aipples, but 



"BLIGHTY" 31 

they aye gi'ed me a sair wame!" And the 
train swept out of the station. 

I was instantly reminded of another 
northern lad who told me that often, when 
lying wounded after Neuve Chapelle, he 
used to think of that same manse garden, 
and the ''bonnie flooers aye shinin' there." 

The soldier loves to tell you the names 
of his diseases. I have met many who 
suffered from *'Gasteria" — a much more 
accurate name than science recognizes; 
while more than one is sorry for his wife 
at home who is distracted by the *insinu- 
endos" of her neighbours. Many suffer 
also from a "historical tendency." 

A few evenings since, I had just con- 
cluded a service, when about a dozen 
strapping Royal Scots, with broad bonnets, 
entered the hut. One could not mistake 
their nationality; and I felt as though I 
ought to know them. Sure enough, some 
of them were from Auld Reekie, and two 
were boys from my old parish of Alloa. 
And they were under the care of an Edin- 
burgh City Councillor, who looked to the 
manner born, as fit for and as happy in a 
camp as in a council chamber. We had a 
hasty interchange of views, and then we 



B2 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

had to part. The quiet evening light fell 
softly on the faces of my countrymen, and 
for a little while home was not far away. 
The next moment it was good-bye — for 
how long? God knows. May He keep 
them safe till the returning! 

What the home-touch means can only 
be fully understood out here. Just lately, 
in order that the men might know where 
to find us, I procured a cheap little St. 
Andrew's flag, and along the white cross I 
printed the legend — "Church of Scotland — 
Presbyterian chaplains." My old servant 
nailed it up, with pride, on the place where 
we live; and all afternoon thereafter I heard 
him softly whistling Scots Wha Hae. It 
is wonderful what the national symbol con- 
veys; and especially to us Northerners. 
We should use it more frequently than 
we do. 

It is extremely interesting to encounter 
the soldiers' opinions about the people 
amongst whom they have been moving. 
And it is very funny also to observe how 
the point of view affects these. One Scot 
said to me, "D'ye ken what an auld wife 
had the impudence to say to me? Says she, 
'You Scotch is every bit as bad as the Ger- 



"BLIGHTY" 33 

mans.' Fancy that noo! But, of course, 
I was liftin' ane o' her hens at the time, 
and that wad maybe mak' a difference." 
I quite believe it did, both to the old woman 
and the hen. 

Mascots are numerous, and as miscellane- 
ous as they are plentiful. Any living thing 
that can be tamed becomes the favourite of 
regiment or camp. We ourselves have two, 
and, a few days since, we very nearly had 
three. One of them we thought to be 
a duckling. It was only a little bit of yellow 
fluff when we found it lying by the road- 
side, forlornly peeping, "Oui! oui!" We 
took the familiar word to imply consent, 
and adopted the creature. But it has 
grown by leaps and bounds, and now it is 
a very promising young goose. At first we 
called it ''Tunnag," which is the Gaelic for 
a duck; and now it answers to that name so 
readily that we do not like to change it, lest 
we hurt the creature's feelings. And it 
does just as well, and is quite as correct 
as "England" for "Britain." Our other 
mascot is a kitten, which is a general favour- 
ite; and, indeed, if at night we miss him, 
we go to rest without anxiety, for we know 
he is not far off, nestled up somewhere in a 



34 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

corner of a blanket beside one of Britain's 
heroes. And in the morning he reports 
himself at prayers, and faces the routine of 
the day as usual, beginning by climbing up 
your leg, with a very strong suggestion of 
"the devil among the tailors" from his 
needle-like claws. Our third, which only 
reached the border-line of probability, was 
a dog, of mixed breed, but clerical tastes. 
At any rate, he followed me almost to the 
family hearth, but the attractions of a 
French soldier, and perhaps a flickering 
spasm of patriotism, drew him from my 
heels ere it was too late. 

Dogs of all kinds — of every breed and of 
none — are intimate friends of the soldier. 
Where they come from nobody ever seems 
to know. Their history has no past. They 
enter on the scene full-grown. We asked a 
Scotsman where he had got a very fine little 
puppy. "Oo, ye ken," said he, ''it juist cam' 
in aboot." But it is a remarkable fact that 
what comes "in aboot" seldom, if ever, goes 
"oot aboot" again. 

Seeing off a regiment of Scottish soldiers 
recently, we saw how tenderly the mascot 
was considered. When everything was 
ready, the last thing that was attended to 



"BLIGHTY" 86 

ere boarding the train was the feeding of 
the little kid which was the pet of the corps. 
A stalwart corporal called it to him, gave 
it its milk out of a baby's bottle, and then 
lifted it gently in among its martial com- 
rades for the front. 

Another very interesting regimental 
mascot is a full-grown goose, which was 
picked up on the retreat from Mons. The 
affection of the regiment has protected her 
through two Christmas seasons. The 
Englishmen called her 'Xizzie," but the 
Scotsmen, with that historical instinct 
peculiar to the race, suitably dubbed her 
"Mons Meg." She is a thorough adept in 
the art of hissing at the Huns! 

In a ward of our hospital there is a Ger- 
man prisoner, in bed, amongst our own 
wounded. He was leaning yesterday on 
his arm, looking curiously around him, and 
I observed two pieces of chocolate laid 
beside him. Just a few days since a band 
of captured Huns, with some Zeppelin air- 
devils among them, passed through, and 
some of our men actually bought cigarettes 
and chocolates for them — a very different 
mode of treatment from that accorded to 
our own poor heroes in Germany, spat upon. 



36 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

and used like vermin while they lay helpless, 
suffering, and sick. We are a forgetful if 
not entirely a forgiving people. No wonder 
the enemy does not understand us when 
we say we mean to win this war ! 



BLIGHTY 

There is sunshine in the shadow 

Of the crowded wards to-day. 
And pain seems clean forgotten, 

Sorrow sped upon its way; 
And you wonder what's the matter, 

Till you hear the Sister say — 
"O they're going off to Blighty in the morning." 

There's a new kit underneath my bed, 

I often take a peep 
Just to see it hasn't vanished 

With the fairies, in my sleep. 
Why, I never care a button, 

If I'm only fit to creep, 
For I'm going off to Blighty in the morning. 

Even crutches don't much matter 
When you smell the breath of home. 

When you hear the sailors shouting. 
Who will guide you o'er the foam ; 

And you'll fight your battles over. 
Ne'er again abroad to roam, 
For you're going off to Blighty in the morning. 

You are sorry you are leaving 

Some poor lads behind you here ; 
And your heart, for all its gladness, 

Can't restrain a pitying tear ; 
But you buck them up by telling 
Their own hour of joy is near. 
When they're going oif to Blighty in the morning. 

37 



38 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

How the kiddies will come leaping, 

And the Missis will be glad, 
Though, to see you weak and limping, 

She'll be just a little sad ; 
But she's proud that you have done your bit. 

And now it isn't bad 
Just to get you back in Blighty in the morning. 

In Hospital, France. L. McL. W. 



Ill 

THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 

Since; last I wrote I have left the hospital 
behind, but I can never say good-bye to 
some of the memories of the brave lads 
there. It is in such a place, at such a time 
that one learns much of the material from 
which our Empire has been builded. The 
sacrifices of the past as we have learned 
them in the page of history are understood 
more clearly in the light of the present. 
And it is truly a great thing to see that the 
day of willing devotion to the noblest ideals 
is not yet gone from the life of our people. 
Suffering and death are faced without re- 
pining, and men say farewell to the prom- 
ise of their youth ungrudgingly, feeling 
that the investment for the sake of the 
future of the world is worth the cost which 
they are paying. 

Novelists have written, and imaginative 
folk have often wondered how brave men 
die. It is a topic of perennial interest. My 

39 



40 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

experience is that the bravest hearts who 
are readiest for sacrifice are not by any 
means tired of the world and the burden of 
life. This is a wonderful mystery. For 
these are just as precious to such souls as 
they are to the most shrinking, who would 
scream at the mere thought of pain or the 
loss of anything that makes existence sweet. 
To the greatest, life and death are very 
simple alternatives, lying easily to either 
hand, accepted without complaining. 

One day I was going through a tent of 
suffering men just after a big "stunt." It 
was a day of much and great agony for 
those who were in actual bodily pain and for 
those of us who had to try to help them to 
endure it. I saw two men carried in and 
laid on beds side by side with each other. 
One was obviously very severely wounded. 
The other was swathed in bandages over 
his head and down over his face, apparently 
blinded. For a moment I hesitated, think- 
ing it might be better to come back when, 
perhaps, the agonies of the one might be 
somewhat abated. But I put my hesitation 
aside. I found that the two lads were 
brothers who, fighting in the same trench, 
had been struck down by the same shell. 



THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 41 

Late that evening an ambulance came for 
me as a man was dying, and I found it was 
the soldier I had spoken to earlier in the 
day. 

The camp lay beautifully still. The 
clouds were heavy and the stars were veiled. 
I stepped into the tent, into the breathing 
dark. The beds were swathed in shadow, 
only one red lamp hanging from a central 
post. 

They had brought the brothers quite 
closely together, and the one with the 
bandaged eyes had a hand of the other in 
his own. The dying man took mine in a 
grip of ice. "Padre," he whispered, "I am 
going home. And I wanted you to come 
again to me. Write tenderly to my peo- 
ple. Write as cheerfully as possible. 
This will break their hearts. And pray 
that my brother may be spared." There is 
no ritual for a moment like that. One could 
but ask Him who was broken also for others 
to be near this broken man whose bodv was 
pierced unto dying, for the sake of those he 
loved. We whispered together there, a few 
lines of Jesus, Lover of my soul, and a verse 
of the immortally wonderful Lead, kindly 
Light. And then he put his arm about my 



42 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

neck, and drew me closer. "I tried to do 
what was right/' said he. "O Christ, re- 
ceive my soul. Have mercy upon me." I 
heard a man near me, in the dark, say 
"Amen." And I knew the fellows were 
not sleeping. They were lying there, in 
their own pain, thinking of him who was 
passing, that night, into the Great Beyond. 
Then I said, very quietly, the last verse of 
the hymn he had whispered: 

So long Thy power hath blessed me, sure it still 

Will lead me on 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone, 
And with the morn those angel faces smile 
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile. 

The silence lay between us for a little, till 
the dying man asked, "What o'clock is it?" 
And I told him. "I'm so sorry for disturb- 
ing you so late," said he. "Good-bye, 
Padre, till we meet again." And with a 
sigh he passed away. 

I heard a soft step near me, and 
I looked around, with the dead man in my 
arms. I should not have been astonished 
if I had seen the very Christ, with His 
wounds shining there, behind me, in that 
quiet tent, now so terribly, infinitely still. 



THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 43 

It was only the woman with the red cross 
on her breast, the angel of the sick and 
weary in their pain, seeming always to 
us, in such a moment, the nearest we can 
get to Christ, for tenderness and help. 
And so I laid the dead man down upon his 
pillow; and had to turn immediately to the 
living one to comfort him. 

As long as I live I shall lift my hat to 
the red cross. It is, of course, the symbol 
of the highest sacrifice earth's history ever 
knew; and it is still the mark of the 
tender est devotion and most perfect self- 
surrender for the sake of others. Every 
man in khaki, and every man that has been 
a soldier, and every soul that has a soldier 
boy to love, should salute that symbol 
which speaks of love amid the hate and 
turmoil of war. For it means womanhood 
consecrated to gentle service, reckoning 
neither wage nor worry in aught it does; 
and it lifts the sting from broken man- 
hood that has ventured for the sake of 
honour and of duty, through comradeship 
in suffering, to the verge of life, and 
beyond it. 

War takes a man in the splendid vigour 
of his full manhood, and flings him out of 



44 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

trench and battlefield a bleeding thing. 
The devoted women of the hospital tents 
shrink from no duty when the suffering 
and mire-stained man is brought to them. 
There can be no greater self-mastery and 
no more sublime self-forgetfulness than 
the washing of the bodies of the stricken, 
and the dressing of the terrible wounds 
that have broken their murderous way 
into the fair flesh of the soul's house. 
And how they work! It has to be seen 
to be understood, and once seen it can never 
be forgotten. Faithfulness, tenderness, and 
loving devotion are the marks of those min- 
istering angels, "when pain and anguish 
wring the brow.'* There is no question of 
adherence to hours. It becomes a question 
of adherence to duty when a rush is on. 
There is no strike for shorter hours, or an 
increased wage, or a war bonus with them 
or the brave men whom they serve. The 
men, even to the roughest "grouser," appre- 
ciate it fully. "Oh, sister ! go to rest now," 
I have heard them say, pleadingly, to the 
tired woman with the red cross on her breast 
and the white cross in her heart. 

So also with the lads who drive the 
ambulance cars. I have felt my heart fill 



THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 45 

as I watched them bringing in the wounded. 
Gently as a mother carrying a sick child 
in her bosom, they creep with their ago- 
nized burdens over the rough roads, calcu- 
lating every inequality, thinking through 
every stage of the journey. I remember, 
at midnight, standing by one that had 
just been brought in. The first to be 
lifted out on a stretcher was a fine fellow, 
an Irishman, with his right arm blown off. 
The doctor, with his lantern, leaned over 
and asked his name. But the suffering man 
looked up in his face and said, "Sir, before 
we do anything, please thank that driver. 
He's a Christian and a gentleman." 

The common sorrow of the Allied nations 
binds them very tenderly together. I 
used to see a fine expression of this in the 
town where I was first stationed, where 
some women who had a garden, on the way 
to the cemetery, were wont to do a very 
beautiful thing. As, almost daily, the 
heavy lumbering waggons with the dead 
came rolling along, those kindly hearts came 
out and laid on each coffin, above the Union 
Jack, a bouquet of exquisite flowers. Then 
the waggons rumbled on towards the 
graves. It was a sweet tribute to the brave 



46 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

strangers who are fighting in France, so 
many of them giving their all in sacrifice 
for Hberty, love, and home in this hideous 
uprising of all that was monstrous in the 
dark ages that are past. 

One perhaps learns most by unlearning. 
I used to think of the spirit of pain as 
intensely, even immensely, vocal. I re- 
member, especially, when I was young, a 
great gully in the north, beside the sea, 
up which the waves came dashing in per- 
petually recurrent warfare, the flood seek- 
ing ever higher, only to be drawn away 
down the sloping shingle again, shrieking, 
to the main. Often in the daytime I would 
listen, and, in the dark, would linger near, 
held by the awe of the unsleeping tragedy 
of that vast elemental grief which sways 
about the edges of the world. I told my 
heart, "This is the spirit of the world's 
pain, finding voice." But now I know 
otherwise. I have learned better, in the 
school of sufifering, in the Land of War. 
The spirit of pain is silent — tholing, at its 
deepest. It looks at you out of those 
suffering eyes. There is no cry in it. For 
the mystery of duty is within its depths. 
The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is its truest 



THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 47 

picture. So it comes to be that the nobility 
and manliness of the brave combine to 
transfigure, with unforgettable splendour 
of ineffable beauty, the darkness of our 
times. When they do speak, there is a 
majesty of stillness about their utterance, 
vast as the mid-deep, far away, out under 
the stars. 

The lads are uplifted by the nearness of 
the Unseen. I have before me two genuine 
documents, letters of two fine boys who 
went Godwards up the highway of the sun 
— the way of sacrifice. They speak for 
themselves. No novelist's imagination 
could create so fine an utterance. One was 
scribbled in the trenches, the other in the 
hospital ward, to those who had the best 
claim on the best which the writers had to 
give. Said one — 

"I am in the trenches, and in half an 
hour we go over the top. Our artillery is 
going at it hammer and tongs, the biggest 
bombardment in English history. It is 
just like huge express trains rushing 
through the air in hundreds. All of us 
are happy in the prospect of a clean fight, 
after so many weary months as passive 
spectators of anything but warfare, except 



48 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

on rare occasions. If I get through all 
right I shall add a postscript to this. If 
not, mother dear, I know you will not be 
beaten by a Spartan mother who had no 
heavenly Father revealed to her to look to 
for comfort, but yet could say, 'Come back 
with victory, or not at all.' With heaps 
of love. ..." 

The other is suffused with the same 
straightforward spirit of fearlessness and 
faith. 

"I was glad to see your answer this 
morning, but am sorry I have not enough 
strength to write much. A good few died 
of wounds in this hospital through weak- 
ness, but I am leaving all doubts with 
God, as He holds the key of all the Un- 
known, and I am glad. So if I die before 
long, and I cannot see anything more sure, 
I hope to meet you all in God's good time. 
My wound is numb. It is in my thigh, and 
I have no pain. ... I am now at the bal- 
ance, to live or die. So good day, and God 
bless all. ..." 

There was nothing really extraordinary 
about these boys amongst their fellows. 
But one is struck by the frequency with 
which the men, after a deep emotion. 



THE SPIRIT OF PAIN 49 

touch literature in their letters. Of course 
the secret of true style lies in a real experi- 
ence. Some of them, it is true, tell abso- 
lutely false tales, and their letters are 
sentimental poses. But of the letters of 
dying men there can be no mistake, and 
those boys wrote these on the threshold 
of the eternal mystery. They are types 
of a large proportion of the army of to-day, 
fighting, suffering, and dying as those who 
have looked in the face of the Invisible, 
and are inheriting the promise, "Be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
crown of life." It is surely an incentive 
to the people at home, for honour and 
remembrance. 



IV 

UP THE LINE 

I AM now attached to one of our most 
famous Highland regiments, of which our 
nation has frequently had reason to be very 
proud. Its composition is soundly national. 
Its muster-book might worthily be bound 
in tartan; and its casualty lists read like 
the Communion-roll of a northern parish. 
Not long since the usual cynic asked me, 
with a pitying smile, "How many Scotsmen 
are there in the regiment?" And I said, 
"I could answer you more simply if you put 
your question the other way." "Tut, tut!" 
he replied, "it's full of Englishmen. At 
any rate, I know, straight off, three Lon- 
doners and two Liverpool men in it." But 
I reminded him that it takes more than five 
to make a whole battalion, and that he might 
certainly find a larger proportion of Scots- 
men in a London regiment than Londoners 
in a Scottish one. Such generalities are, 
of course, hasty and worthless at their best. 

so 



UP THE LINE 51 

And, besides, we are a wide-hearted people, 
and are kind to any brave spirit which 
prefers to fight under the shelter of 
a famous name and a historic tartan. So 
let it rest at that. 

I joined up with the battalion when it 
was resting in a beautiful village, with a 
rushing river running seaward, between 
old houses whose gardens crept down 
close to the stream. The grey ruins of 
an ancient chateau peeped over a wooded 
cliff above the square. And at night, 
when all was still, the boom of far-off 
cannon reminded us, as we woke from sleep, 
that we were in the Land of War, and that 
up yonder, through the darkness, lay the 
Valley of Pain awaiting for our coming. 

And then our own call came to move up 
higher. I marched with a group of about 
two hundred men, leaving the village at two 
o'clock one misty morning. There was a 
strange element of weirdness in the prepa- 
rations for departure. The village was in 
black darkness, except for the places where 
our folks were getting ready to go. Here 
and there was busy packing of transport, 
and the gloomy square re-echoed the passing 
of feet. Somewhere, round a corner, Scot- 



52 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

tish voices were singing Aiild Langsyne — a 
parting song full of poignancy in the time 
of war. The people in some of the billets 
got out of bed, and brought forth choice 
wines for a parting cup, with best wishes 
for "bonne chance." We fell in quietly; 
and then out rang the sharp command, and 
off we set. As we marched, the wooded 
banks on either side sent back the sound of 
our marching, till we could well believe that 
ghostly bands were marching with us. One 
missed some kind of music. And I had not 
my bagpipes at hand. At first there was 
a snatch of song, or the whistling of a bit 
of melody. And then silence, as the heavy 
packs began to tell on the men's shoulders. 
The day was breaking when we reached 
a station; and we lay down on the ground, 
to wait. We need patience at such a junc- 
ture, for the authorities never hurry. A 
fife and drum band, far off, began to send 
its music forward through the dawn, and 
a dusty battalion filed into the station. And 
then up came the horseboxes, and off we 
puffed, a stage nearer the guns. 

How hot the few miles were after we left 
the train. And how glad we were to get 
to our billets in a little village crowded to 



UP THE LINE 63 

overflowing with troops. Our own billet 
was in a farmhouse, with the usual manure 
heap in the courtyard at the door, and mil- 
lions of flies, which gave us a most incon- 
venient welcome. But we rejoiced at last 
to be able to lie down on a floor, with a 
haversack under our heads and an overcoat 
across our feet, losing ourselves in a sleep 
such as money could never buy nor feather 
beds could woo. 

There was a beautiful garden behind the 
house, and the ground rolled away in gentle 
slope toward the horizon. In the evenings, 
after dinner, we used to go out among 
the apple trees, and watch the skies away 
southwards, lit by the constant flashing 
of the guns; but the sound was not carried 
to us, as the hills shut it off from our hear- 
ing until night sank, deep and quiet, when 
the voice of a mighty power, inscrutable, 
seemed calling us all to come and take our 
share. 

I was moved up to a tented hospital on 
the hillside, and for a few days and nights 
the steady stream of muddy, bloodstained, 
and maimed men had been pouring through 
the wards, while an incessant crescendo of 
cannonading shook the earth and air. To 



54. THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the right we could distinguish the rapid, 
angry, and efBcient blatter of the French 
artillery. But one day, in the midst of it, 
while we sat at mess, suddenly a new 
voice entered into the din with a very 
masterful insistence. And, as we listened 
for a moment, the gloomy clouds were torn 
with the vivid lightning blaze, and all 
the thunders of heaven seemed loosed 
above the carnival of war. It was a mag- 
nificent and most solemnizing interlude, as 
though the very Titans had chosen at last 
to enter into earth's agony. "Ah," said 
one, ''that's the real thing. How it makes 
pygmies of us all." And then the flood- 
gates seemed opened, the sluices of the skies 
flung free, and the rain in solid sheets swept 
over the world. And that night the 
wounded and the dying came in, mud-caked 
to the eyes, but their hearts, however feebly 
beating, all athrob with unconquerable faith 
in the cause. "Go down," said one to me — 
"go down to the walking-case station. I'm 
told it's worth seeing." And it was. 
About a hundred yards along the road stood 
a little shed, where two tired men were 
writing down hasty particulars as a steady 
line of battered warriors of all ages kept 



UP THE LINE 55 

passing into tents beyond in the dark. 
Along the roadside stood a queue of over 
three hundred men, like a line at a picture- 
house door on some holiday at home — some 
with a trouser leg cut away and a bloody 
bandage in its place, some with their heads 
bound up, some with steel helmet, and per- 
haps half a blanket round their shoulders, 
all scarred by the hungry claws of death 
that had just missed them. They flung gro- 
tesque shadows against the light of the dim 
lanterns; but yet they were not cast down, 
for they knew they had made a good fight 
of it, and had left behind them in their 
places as brave hearts still to carry on the 
game. 

We went up the line on a Sunday night. 
It had been a very beautiful morning, but 
heavy clouds began to gather. We had 
been expecting the summons, and our 
hearts were ready for it. I had my Church 
Parade in a stubble field. Away to my 
left an observation balloon was being fired 
at with shrapnel that burst in little fluffy 
pufifs which had a flash in the midst of 
them. It took something to keep men's 
attention with such a rival attraction 
overhead. In fact, it took a good deal to 



56 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

hold my own. Every minute I longed to 
look around and see what was happening. 
Our friends declared that the Gordon squint 
was quite discernible for quite a while, as 
the men had been listening with one eye and 
watching the balloon with the other! In 
the afternoon I had a Communion service 
at the Y.M.C.A., in the little courtyard of 
a small farm, and my paragraphs were 
punctuated by the cry of the guns. The 
twenty-third Psalm and the second Para- 
phrase take on a meaning then deep as eter- 
nity. And some who were present were 
very soon to put to the proof the promise 
of the words they sang, for that night they 
were speeding right up to the line of battle. 

It was just at this time that I got my first 
taste of shell-fire. It is an interesting 
experience, though there are pleasanter 
ones, if a person may choose. But it is 
not nearly so hateful as being under the 
threat of a Zeppelin raid, as I recall it in 
the hush of midnight. 

I was going up with a friend and sixty 
men, who were carrying rations and sup- 
plies to the trenches. It was a memorable 
day for many to whom I had grown 
intimately close as their Chaplain. 



UP THE LINE 57 

I could not help wondering what the 
folks at home would think if they wei^e to 
see our own fields ravaged and riven under 
the heavy hand of war, like those through 
which we rode — our sweetest villages and 
towns battered into dust heaps, our wood- 
lands shattered by shell into derelict 
stumps, and dead men in the valleys, 
beyond the appeal of earth's conflict for 
ever. We rode along more than one torn- 
up route which had only recently been 
streets where children had played and 
where old men had smoked and talked, and 
in between lines of crumbling wreckage 
that had been happy homes; while the 
guns around and ahead seemed shouting 
of the ruin they had made, and of the 
devastation yet to come ere victory and 
peace should kiss together, and the horrid 
wreckage of a continent be restored. 

At a sheltered corner we left our horses, 
and pressed on to a sunken road, with a 
wood along one side of it. And there we 
fell in, on a bank, to receive final 
instructions. And we began to see what 
kind of thing was going on quite at hand. 
For first came a line of German prisoners 
carrying down our wounded in stretchers. 



58 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

The kilted fellows sat up when they saw us, 
and waved their hands, some shouting 
greetings as they came. "We've taken 
the place," said one. "But will we hold 
it?" I asked. And a look, unforgettable, 
swept across the eager face, ere it fell back 
again upon the pillow. "Of course," was 
the reply. "It's no likely we'll gi'e up 
what we've paid for." 

But, as we waited, suddenly out from 
over the wood came a screaming thing 
which swept above our heads with a shriek, 
and fell just behind us. It was no dis- 
grace that brave fellows ducked as it 
passed, though, fortunately, it threw its 
horrible message away from us when it 
struck the earth and exploded. But it 
was followed by more of its kind ere we 
moved onwards. And when we passed 
along we saw more instances of the price 
that was being paid. For across the road 
came wounded men, some limping in 
solitary pain, others helped by slightly 
less stricken comrades, some falling down 
to rest a while ere struggling onwards once 
again, and some in stretchers carried by 
tired-looking bearers. We crossed some 
open ground, and reached a long, narrow 



UP THE LINE 59 

communication trench, packed with men, 
with no room for us to get along it. It 
was very striking to see the line of faces 
suddenly look up to note who were passing 
by. Then some one shouted, "Look out!" 
And in that instant a wild messenger of 
war's passion came hurtling over and burst 
with a roar ahead of us. We made our 
shoulders as narrow as possible, and in- 
stinctively turned our steel helmets to 
meet the spatterment of earth and iron; 
and then pressed on again. The shell- 
torn ground sloped darkly up towards a 
gloomy horizon line, on which we saw the 
black smoke and earth-rubbish of bursting 
shells; and again and again we had to 
stop and stoop before the missiles of the 
German Hymn of Hate, until it grew so 
"hot" that we were ordered to get into the 
trench. I got pushed from my place 
through the haste of some of our fellows; 
and then, with a rush and a roar, a shell 
blew in the side of the trench, and the 
man who, for just a few seconds, had been 
where I should have stood, was struck 
down, and lay bleeding where he fell. My 
friend was lifted up and whirled right round 
by the concussion. A German, buried in 



60 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the parapet, was torn out of his grave, and 
his leg just missed my friend's head. "I 
thought it was yours. Padre," said he. 
"But I fancy you'd have said something in 
passing if it had been so." 

And then, the next moment, there was no 
thought of laughter; our hearts very sud- 
denly were charged with something like 
tears. In the Land of War reactions follow 
one another quickly. Life and Death gall 
each other's heels. 

It was a narrow shave for us all; and if 
we had been still out in the open many of 
us must certainly have been in the casualty 
list. We pushed on to the Headquarters 
Dugout, which the enemy had apparently 
located, for he was giving it most 
uncomfortable attentions. It was a swelter- 
ing little hole in the earth, and the 'phone 
was being busily employed, for we had 
again lost a gallant commanding officer, 
most of our officers were dead or wounded, 
and a big chasm had been made in the 
ranks of the regiment. 

Going back over the open ground was 
more unpleasant than coming up had been. 
The air was filled with the shriek and hum 
of missiles; and one felt the need of an 



UP THE LINE 61 

eye on one's shoulder, and had to be 
ready for a leap into the nearest shell-hole 
for cover. 

We passed one fellow standing by the 
way, holding up his kilt, and he shouted, 
"My bandage has slippit." So we got it 
readjusted, and he was able to walk. But 
at midnight, in the ambulance tent, I saw 
him on the operating table for another 
wound which he had received in his later 
progress, from a nasty bit of shrapnel. 
Farther down we came on a stretcher with a 
wounded man in it, the stretcher-bearers 
lying beside it exhausted. We offered our 
help, but they would not have it. "We'll 
be all right in a minute or two," they said. 
Ahead of them was a gaunt Irishman, 
apparently blinded, and in a state of great 
exhaustion. A little comrade, with his 
arm around him, was helping him along. 
They had lain out for over a day in 
No Man's Land. I took one side of the 
poor chap, and helped him also. "Is it 
far?" he kept asking. And I always told 
him it was only a few yards more. "But 
I am blind," he said. And I assured him 
he would probably soon be all right — a lot 
of fellows had that experience. What else 



G2 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

could one say? "Now, Tim," said his 
chum, "you wouldn't believe me when I 
told you that; but you're duty bound to 
believe an officer." But the man, with per- 
ceptibly increasing weakness, only kept 
asking, "O God— is it far ?" 

I learned how easily a story grows, and 
how many a tale that is not true has fre- 
quently a groundwork of fact. For in 
going up the trench, it got blocked just 
before the shell came over. And I had to 
take from a man in front of me his rifle 
which had got entangled in another man's 
equipment. I carried it forward with me. 
And when I got home I found the story 
before me, that I had led a detachment of 
the Gordons to victory ! 

And, again, in a pictorial paper, was my 
portrait, with the legend that while I was 
stooping over a wounded man, a "Hun, 
lingering in the vicinity," had thrown a 
bomb which had narrowly missed me. 

While still a third phase of the episode 
took the form of a story told to a friend of 
mine by the man whose rifle I had taken, to 
the effect that I had just done so when a 
shell blew in the trench, and neither I nor 
the rifle had been seen again! 



UP THE LINE 63 

One could easily trace these to the mipres- 
sions conveyed through soldiers' letters from 
the line. But it shews how history is very 
frequently made. 

Another thing I learned — namely, how 
kindly towards the Padre beats the Scottish 
soldier's heart. For the first thing I heard 
after the shell burst was the cry, "Where's 
the minister?" 

Men do learn in such circumstances to 
think of others. For war is the most 
remarkable of anomalies. It is a cruel, 
cursed bit of dirty work. The romance of 
it is for the most part written by comfort- 
able firesides. It is a thing of bitterest 
pain, of rending grief, and inconsolable be- 
reavements. But yet it does evolve such 
nobleness of enterprise, such splendour of 
shining self-forgetfulness, such consecrated 
dedication to ideals high and far above this 
little dusty star which is our world, as evoke 
undying wonderment in all ages. So it may 
perhaps have in it an element of rebuke, 
blessing, and help for the sordidness and the 
goodness which together make up the 
strangely fine story of human life day by 
day. 



m 

TREK AND TRENCH 

TiM^ flies in France. We get immersed 
in the work of the moment. We cannot 
escape from its enfolding power, and every 
day gets full of the demand on our sympathy 
and interest. The march, the trench, the 
billet, and all the countless things that 
fill each passing hour, leave little room for 
ennui. You may feel tired enough some- 
times, but something fresh is round every 
corner, and each distinct experience is 
threaded on the one clear purpose of duty 
every day. 

After my first taste of bombardment, 
when intimate death went closely past 
me, flinging down another who had that 
moment taken my place, we removed to 
another sphere of the war. That was a 
very serious time for us, and we left many 
a mother's son and dear comrade behind us 
when we marched away. Surely there can 
be nothing more pathetic than the remnant 

64 



TREK AND TRENCH 65 

of a Highland regiment swinging along its 
route, with the pipers at the head of it, play- 
ing merry tunes to hearts that have no mirth 
in them, for remembrance of the brave left 
sleeping. 

It is amazing how we almost never 
mention the names of those who have 
fallen. It is an unwritten law of the regi- 
ment, fraught with pathos. To an outsider 
it might seem callous or indifferent; but it 
is the very opposite. It does not the less 
mean that their memory is written deeply 
on our inmost souls. Even in the Church 
Parade on the Sunday following, we do not 
directly refer to them, though our hearts are 
full of the thought of them all the time. 
Well do I remember our first service, after 
a bitter experience. The lines seemed so 
much thinner, and nearer the drums which 
made up my pulpit. It was in a beautiful 
field, in a hollow between sweetly wooded 
slopes. And just as we had finished our 
opening psalm, a wonderful perfume filled 
the air. It was the wild thyme, bruised, 
broken, and crushed by our trampling feet, 
sending out an odour like a benediction, 
from its wounding. And it gave a back- 
ground of ineffable value to our thought of 



66 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

those brave men slain, from whose sacrifice 
such blessing and wonder of peace should 
come to the sorrowing world in God's good 
time. I felt as though they were very 
near us. And we had a veiled mystery 
marching with us, as we followed the pipes 
and drums back to the village again. 

The French people appreciated very fully 
what the Somme effort meant, and what it 
had achieved. I was up with the Field 
Ambulance one day, when I heard that our 
regiment had moved back to rest billets, and 
I had missed their going. But I got a 
motor-car to lift me in to the rail-head next 
morning, where I found a brigade going in 
the same direction, so I attached myself to 
them for that journey. That rail-head was 
Albert, a town very well known in the story 
of the war — a large and prosperous place 
before the big guns battered it to ruin, and 
sent the people fleeing from their homes for 
safety. Everybody knows about its fine 
church, with the mosaic-decorated porch, 
and the tower which was surmounted by a 
huge statue of the Madonna, holding the 
Holy Child in her arms. A shell had struck 
the tower, and overthrown the group. But 
the Madonna was caught and held by the 



TREK AND TRENCH 67 

heel, so that now she leans out above the 
town, as though protecting it with her loving 
care. Underneath is constant traffic of 
motor lorry, ambulance, and marching men ; 
and the Child, whose advent spoke of peace 
and good will long ago, looks down from His 
mother's arms, watchfully waiting till the 
mills of God grind the proud nations into 
bloody dust. There is a legend already that 
when that figure falls to earth the war will 
end. But there is another legend that, 
when it falls, France will fall with it into 
defeat. And they say that the wise old 
priest, believing in works as well as faith, 
and in the sound doctrine that we ourselves 
can answer half our prayers if we choose, 
got the blacksmith to go up the tower, and 
fix an iron clamp around the feet of the 
statue so full of national destiny, so as to 
give a practical turn to the people's prayers. 
I have not tested this part of the legend, but 
I hope that it is true. I should like to *'sit 
under" such a man — whose prayers must 
have the saving grace of practice in them, 
and who is prepared to make his prayers a 
real bit of his life. It is the best example I 
know of Faith and Works. It is always 
good to pray that your cattle or your chil- 



68 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

dren may not fall over the cliff into the sea ; 
but it is wise also to put up a fence along 
the edge of peril at your earliest oppor- 
tunity. I wish more people followed his ex- 
ample, and then fewer would be blaming 
God to-day for the evil and the sorrows 
which they could themselves have prevented. 
That town is well worth seeing. In the 
square there is a notice board warning 
people not to linger, as there is danger. 
The houses are shaken to their foundations. 
Some day a glazier will make the beginning 
of a fortune among the broken windows. 
Bricklayers and plasterers should get a good 
thing in the way of trade in the rebuilding 
after the war. There was a huge factory 
of Singer's Company, but the floors are 
gone, the roof is smashed, and the place is 
a congested cavern of rusting sewing- 
machines. In the square is a group of 
gipsy caravans in various stages of shatter- 
ment. And almost daily the German 
wakes up and remembers that he ought to 
send something over to try to wipe it off 
the map. So you hear the hurtle and 
scream of the big Hun shells, with a 
''scrunch" as they fall, as though they were 
breaking the bones of a world ; or the nasty 



TREK AND TRENCH 69 

cough of a howitzer somewhere, Hke a grim 
old giant spitting out his teeth in a paroxysm 
of temper. 

We got into the train of horseboxes there, 
and set off upon our journey. It was a 
lovely day. And I think that travelling 
in a horsebox on a fine day is as enjoyable 
as anything I know. It is far freer than in 
a closely-packed carriage. We sat in the 
open doors, with our legs out, and our feet 
on the foot-boards. And we saw the whole 
country, in a way that exceeded our expec- 
tations. We passed through towns and 
villages, hamlets and fields, gardens and 
orchards, flats and rolling territory. And 
now and again old folks came to the edge of 
the railway embankment, and, first pointing 
heavenwards, held up both hands in the 
attitude of blessing as we passed. They 
knew where we were coming from, and what 
we had been busy at, for their sakes. At 
last we reached our destination, though it 
was not mine; and the men got out, formed 
up along the roadway, and then marched off, 
till the sound of their bugles died away 
across the woodlands. I found a motor 
lorry, on a rambling errand; and, discover- 
ing that at the end of its journey it was to 



70 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

reach the town where I heard my people 
were lying, I got a lift in it. It was a long 
journey, for we had tyre trouble, and engine 
trouble, and lost our way in the dark, 
finding sweet, quiet little villages of sleepy 
folk, who put us right again with yawning 
directions, till I climbed inside, and lay down 
on the jolting floor, in a delightful slumber. 
When I awoke, I was in a village square, in 
the dawn. And when I got out to see if I 
could find a breakfast anywhere, I found the 
village was the billet-home of our people. 

How kind these villagers were, and how 
interested in the kilted men. Every even- 
ing, when the pipers came down the street, 
and played in front of headquarters, every- 
body crowded round to watch and listen. 
But we were not to be long there. Rest 
means a varied kind of thing Somewhere in 
France. In a morning of down-pouring 
rain we set off again for another journey, 
and after hours of soaking wait at a way- 
side station, we got into our train once more 
for we knew not where. We were 
drenched; we were tired; but we were not 
down-hearted. And song and story kept 
our crowded carriage happy and bright. 
Now it was Annie L,aurie; and now the tale 



TREK AND TRENCH 71 

of the bashful poor relation who attended 
every funeral, in the vain hope of a legacy, 
till somebody left him a hundred pounds, 
which so upset him that he dropped his hat 
into the grave, and all he could think of 
saying was "Beg pardon." And then, as 
the night wore on, the talk was of home, and 
the quiet places on the hillsides, and behind 
them. And somebody started to croon 
O God of Bethel. And so we passed into 
quiet, till sleep gave us dreams of dear faces 
far away from the Land of War. 

When we were awakened, it was to step 
out on the border of Belgium. The rain 
was over and gone. A clear blue frosty sky 
was overhead, and the moon was high in 
the heavens. We fell in, and the pipers 
struck up a march ; and out we moved along 
the rough causeway, past dark houses of 
sleep, in the cold early morning. On either 
side we saw the star shells rising and fall- 
ing; and we wondered where we were to lie 
down till the day. We stepped off the road 
in France, into a very miry field in Belgium ; 
and in a tent lay down in our blankets, and 
slept as soundly as though we were in the 
Hotel Cecil. 

In a day or two we moved on again. It 



72 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

was good to move, if only out of one miry- 
place into another. Even change of mud is 
wholesome. We passed through a village 
which had been well shelled, especially at the 
cross-roads; and, of course, the church had 
caught its share, but the big square tower 
stood solid and unshaken. And then it was 
the trenches. They were comfortable and 
clean at that season, but they only needed a 
little rain to be provoked into wretchedness, 
when you might find the thing you were to 
walk upon, floating level with your haunch. 
What a change this was for us from the 
former sphere of operations, where night 
and day the throb and passion of artillery 
were heard, with the big guns breaking in 
like a huge drummer, somewhere, beating 
a mad revally. Here it was the opposite 
extreme of grim stillness, which seemed 
louder far than sound. And that stillness, 
broken only by the occasional "spit" of a 
sniper's bullet, meant that men were tensely 
watching one another across the desolate 
No Man's Land, and that a finger raised 
above the parapet on either side would 
bring the swift messenger of death into 
prompt activity. A ruined railway station 
occupied a corner of the trenches, and there 



TREK AND TRENCH [Jf3 

still stood the remains of the last train 
which had been loaded up by the enemy, 
but which could not be taken away by 
them. There were portions of our front 
line only thirty or forty yards from the Ger- 
man lines; and sometimes we had to flatten 
ourselves against the side of a trench, and 
bury our noses in the parapet, when the 
trench mortars and "whiz bangs" came 
across, shaking everything, and frequently 
blowing in the frail defences. More than 
once the foe crept forward in the dark, and 
lay hid in shell-holes, waiting; and in the 
misty grey dawn one of our young officers, 
whose inquisitiveness could not longer be 
patient, peeped over the edge of the sand- 
bags, to escape death only by a hairbreadth. 
He accepted ever afterwards my advice to 
the boys: "Keep your head; and keep it 
down; and you will keep it on." And yet 
the impulse to take just one good look 
across is almost irresistible. In the begin- 
ning of the war it meant a long roll of hon- 
our, especially for the overseas troops. But 
time and experience are wonderful teachers, 
even for the brave. 



VI 
MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 

Whe:n I saw Colonel McCrae riding at 
the head of his battalion, coming from the 
trenches, and got from some of the lads the 
welcome, "Good old Edinburgh!" I won- 
dered what the folks at home would think 
if they could see their boys. 

It is sometimes strange how one meets 
with friends in the Land of War. Indeed, 
it is wonderful to think how few we do 
meet, when we consider how many whom 
we know are everywhere about, while yet we 
may be shut out from contact with one an- 
other by the daily duties which keep us run- 
ning in our own groove. 

One day I met an elderly officer of my ac- 
quaintance coming along, obviously under 
some excitement, sorrow chasing gladness 
in his face. He said, "I heard that the New 
Zealanders were marching by, and my boy's 
battalion was amongst them. So I ran 
down the road and saw him; and we 

74 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 75 

marched a bit of the way together. I 
haven't looked on the lad's face for over six 
years now. God keep him safe, to see his 
mother again." And he turned away 
quickly up the hill. 

Another time I was at the funeral of a 
poor brave lad from an English regiment. 
The grave was in a little corner, off the 
road ; and a big gun, within a few yards, 
was yelping its angry message to the 
foe, as we laid down the sleeper, wrapped 
in his brown blanket, to his last long 
sleeping place. As I finished the service 
a young officer came forward, and I saw he 
was one of my own church boys, fine, clear- 
eyed, bold — the only son of a worthy fire- 
side, fresh from college distinctions which 
spoke of the promise of the future. We 
spent the day together in my tent talking of 
all whom we knew and loved, and of a recent 
experience through which he had passed, 
when the wave of death had swept back, 
leaving him and a handful of men breathless 
on the verge of safety. We parted reluc- 
tantly from one another; and just a few 
days later he led again his faithful fellows 
into the dark valley. And now he is sleep- 
ing till the final trumpet call, where he fell 



76 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

with his face forward. No wonder we are 
sometimes loath to part, when we meet and 
talk together, in the Land of the great 
Uncertainty. I was by that time far away 
in another sphere of activity, where sniper 
watched for sniper with a grimly tense vigi- 
lance, and the listening stillness seemed 
louder than the roaring guns we had 
left behind us. But I often think of the 
place where his dust is sleeping, near the 
ruined village and the splintered forest 
through which our men went shouting to 
victory, laughing in the face of death, on a 
summer morning. 

Some meetings wake sudden memories 
of home. One day I met a young officer 
from my parish searching for me in the 
streets of a French town. His heart had 
the glamour of the West born with it. I 
remembered his mother dying. She had 
forgotten the ancient language of her 
people, for she had early sought the South. 
But after all the years of the city 
her heart turned back along the ways of re- 
membrance, and she asked for a Gaelic 
psalm. And so a friend came with me, and 
we sang very softly by her bedside the psalm 
which the folks sing still, away where the 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 77 

low waves croon by quiet shores, at Com- 
munion gatherings in the Hebrides. And 
she joined with us in spirit in a prayer in the 
fading tongue of her people, ere she went 
home, and we turned once more to the war. 
When I saw her boy there, I seemed to hear 
the cars going by again in the darkened 
streets ; and home came very near my heart. 

Among the first of the lads I met in my 
regiment was one who came up to tell me 
how I had baptized him nineteen years 
since, in my first parish in the North. He 
seemed to think that I should have remem- 
bered his face, though I had never seen 
him since that day. Yet while he spoke 
to me, I could not but see the cottage on 
the croft, on the hillside far away, where 
the corn was golden to the door, and the 
larks were singing in the blue sky overhead, 
and nobody had a thought of war in his 
heart, the day I went up to the baptism 
there. 

I often wonder if I shall ever hear the 
song of the lark again without hearing also 
the cry of strong men in their agony. For 
often I have left the tent just for a moment's 
relief, and there, far above this sorrow of 



7S THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

ours, how wondrously sounded that splendid 
rapture of music. 

There are constant opportunities for the 
artist amongst our men, if only the artist 
were there to catch the play of firelight on 
rugged faces, and the shapes and postures 
of comely manhood. One night we had 
a cinematograph show in a farm court- 
yard, which was packed with our fellows. 
The scene was unforgettable. Some heavy 
clouds hung overhead, but there were wide 
blue star-strewn spaces, where the sickle 
of the new moon hung dimly, like a thing 
of dream. The bare, gaunt skeleton 
rafters of the broken roofs of the barns 
and outhouses stood out black against the 
sky. And as the pictures flickered across 
the screen, the hushed attention of the men 
was most infectious. Sometimes it was a 
scene of some of the places only too familiar 
to them — a ruined village, a shell-torn road, 
or a group of officers at the door of a 
broken-down house, to be greeted with a 
deep silence, or the swift intake of breath 
which speaks of poignant remembrance, or 
a hearty cheer as this or that favourite per- 
sonality appeared. Then there were ships, 
the sea-lions of Britannia; followed by 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 79 

laughter-provoking reproductions of Bairns- 
father's inimitable cartoons. The next 
time these men were crowded together 
under the strain of deep emotion, they were 
themselves passing through an episode of 
imperial and international picture-making 
and map-changing, up where the guns were 
drumming the prelude of another act in the 
tragedy of war. For it was just a few days 
later that the laughing crowd in that moonlit 
courtyard went up the line again. 

It is always very touching to see how 
thoughtful of others the men are, even 
when they themselves are in painful cir- 
cumstances. I remember one man, seri- 
ously wounded. And I asked, "Have you 
written to your mother?" He repHed, 
"Not yet — you see it is not easy for me." 
So I offered to do it for him. But he said, 
"I'd rather do it myself. You see, if she 
noticed that any other person had written 
it she'd begin to think that I had lost my 
hand." I lent him my pencil, and watched 
beside him while he laboriously, with his 
bandaged hand, spelt out a loving letter, say- 
ing how glad he was to be so well, and how 
eagerly he was looking forward to go home 
to her — in fact, all the nice things he could 



80 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

tell her In order to keep her mind free from 
worry about her boy. 

The Chaplain's work is frequently of a 
very miscellaneous nature, if he is human, 
and not too conscious of his uniform. It is 
not a double life that he leads, but a life all 
round. For example, one day in a tent I 
found the orderlies so busy that some of the 
patients were trying to shave themselves, 
and they were not finding it an easy task. 
So, as I saw blood streaming down the cheek 
of one wounded fellow, I essayed to finish 
the job, which I did, without scars. The 
blood of a brave man is too precious at pres- 
ent to be lightly flung away. But I had to 
promise to perform the same useful opera- 
tion for some of the others next day. One 
of them was wounded in the chestj and was 
helpless, but he was worrying very much 
about his bristling beard. My Gillette 
swept away his worry; and it was requisi- 
tioned for half a dozen like him. It must 
have been somewhat of a trial for the 
patients, for the growth, with most of them, 
was at least a week old, and some of it pretty 
thorny. But they were thankful to be clean 
again. When I had finished these, a little 
lanky chap, with a tiny fluff of down on his 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 81 

chin, said, "Me, too, please, sir." But the 
others laughed aloud, and one, lying flat, 
with many wounds, panted out, "Come over 
here, mate, and I'll blow it off for you." 

While I was shaving one poor lad, who 
could scarcely breathe, he gasped, with a 
smile, "This would make a fine thing for the 
papers, or the 'Movies.' " And a Scottish 
boy said, "I'll tell oor man when I get hame. 
I ne'er was shaved by a Parish Minister 
afore, and I dinna expect to be again." 

It brought a touch of variety into their 
life. And, just as I finished, the surgeon 
came along. "Hello, Padre!" he cried, 
"what's this you're at?" And then, with a 
laugh, he said, "Oh, well — who knows? It's 
not far from a parson's job, for cleanliness 
is next to godliness, of course." 

The spirit of the men is splendidly stead- 
fast. I remember the first wounded man I 
carried on a stretcher. I understood then 
what a heavy bit of work, not too much 
thought of, the stretcher-bearers do. He 
had been shot in the shoulder, which was 
shattered, and the lung had been penetrated. 
But he was very plucky, and uncomplaining. 
He had lain a whole day in No Man's Land ; 
and then, in the dark, he and his of^cer, also 



82 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

wounded, had crawled for some hours, till 
they got into some water, from which they 
could not extricate themselves, and only 
with great difficulty could they keep their 
heads above it, till the rescue came. A little 
longer, and they must both have been 
drowned. 

It is hardly possible to conceive what 
it means. One fine young blue-eyed stal- 
wart told me how he had lain out for thirty- 
six hours. "I was just on the brink of giv- 
ing in, and turning round to die, when I was 
picked up. All the time I was trying to get 
at my water-bottle, which was under me. 
And at last, just before I was saved, I got 
hold of it, only to find that it had been 
pierced by a bullet, and every drop of water 
lost. That moment, if you like, was worse 
than death, after all my struggle, so deep 
and bitter was the disappointment which it 
held for me." 

Contentment is the first big thing that 
comes to a man, obliterating all things else. 
As one little Scotsman, or all that was left 
of him, said, "Thank ye, sir. I'm vera com- 
fortable. Eh, my, it's fine to be in a bed, and 
get a drink o' sweet milk again." 

Out here you get constant proof of the 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 83 

fallacy of the old alien belief that the Scot 
has no humour. One day I came across 
three typical fellow-countrymen in their 
muddy kilts, sitting on a hummock together. 
I asked a dark Celtic-faced one of the three 
his name. And when he told me what it 
was, and where he came from on the moun- 
tain fringe, I said, "But you'll have the 
Gaelic?" *'No a word," he answered. "I 
hadna the intelligence to pick it up, and had 
to be content wi' English." "Oh," I said, 
"you had just swallowed it down too hastily 
with your porridge." The next man had a 
fine old Highland name, but without the 
"Mac," which should have been before it. 
"What's become of your 'Mac'?" I asked. 
And the first said, with a laugh, "It wasna 
wi' porridge that he swallowed it doon, ony 
wey." The third had a very bad cold, which 
was troubling him exceedingly, so that some- 
times he could hardly speak. "You're a 
Scotsman, too," I said. "Ye micht weel 
guess that, sir," was his reply, "an' me wi' 
sic a dry cough !" 

When the Push began, how keen every- 
body was, feeling that what all the world 
had been waiting for had come at last. We 
used to listen for the voice of the storm that 



84 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

was coming, and at length it came, when all 
along the wide horizon rang the horrid and 
yet magnificent clang of war. Earth had 
never heard anything like it. Such a chorus 
had never stirred the heart of man, until we 
caught it. The wounded in the ambulances 
heard it, and were glad. "Hark!" they 
would say. "Now he's getting back his 
own." And they would lie down, with shin- 
ing eyes, upon their pillow. 

At midnight we went up to a hill, and 
we could not tear ourselves away. Fiercer 
and fiercer grew the direful thunders, with 
a grim crescendo, while all the time wild 
flashes stabbed the dark, and flares flickered 
everywhere. There were mesmeric fascina- 
tions in the thought that away in front of 
us the titanic struggle between hell and the 
liberty of the ages was in process, and that 
the finest manhood of our age was enduring 
its passion, maimed, slain, yet stumbling, 
leaping, laughing forward through such a 
glory of effort, achievement, and sacrifice as 
never before was known. We were like 
children, silenced by the stupendous wonder 
of it. 

Then back through the Dressing Station 
swept the balance of the price that had been 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 85 

paid for the beginning of the day of liberty. 
Every place filled to overflowing. There 
were men from Aberdeen and Glasgow with 
their torn and bloody tartans, men from 
Devonshire and Cumberland, men from far 
places over the sea, swirled out of the in- 
ferno which had spattered them with mud 
and blood, and pierced them with bullet and 
splinter. 

It was a most memorable sight, those fel- 
lows, bearing all over them the alphabet of 
the story of their colossal struggle — their 
faces grimed with the smoke and dust and 
sweat of battle, their clothes in ribbons and 
tatters — many of them utterly exhausted, 
some with the excitement of the fight upon 
them still, eager to convince everybody that 
the enemy were "on the run," and that we 
were "giving it to them in the neck." Some 
had to have their clothes cut off them. Some 
were giggling — some were unconscious, ab- 
solutely still, or softly moaning, or talking 
to invisible comrades. That was a time of 
toil for all workers, patient, unremitting, 
without haste and without rest. 

It is then that one learns how little those 
who come through such a crisis can tell, ex- 
cept in regard to what is at the end of their 



86 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

arm or in the immediate circle of their vis- 
ion. I was anxious about a young officer. 
In answer to my inquiries one said, "I seen 
him fa' deid." "Ay," said another, "his 
richt side was torn oot wi' a shell." But I 
began to feel, somehow, with a sort of sec- 
ond sight, that he was coming along some 
time. 

That night I went into one of the 
tents to keep myself busy, till what I hoped 
for should happen. There is nothing more 
impressive than a tent of these suffering 
men at that time, so still it is, so dim and 
prayerful. There was one boy near the door 
— a Scottish lad who had been a gunner. 
He seemed to be very weak, and I went over 
to his side. He thought I was his mother, 
and he said, "Put your arm under my head, 
mummy. I'll be easier then." And as I did 
so he began to say the Lord's Prayer, as so 
often he must have said it in the quiet hour 
at home, when the light was low, ere the 
curtain of sleep came down between him and 
another day. He went through the prayer, 
groping in the middle of it, with a blind kind 
of stumbling difficulty. "Kiss me," he 
whispered, and I kissed him; and tucked 
him into his blanket as his mother used to 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 87 

do when he was a boy. And then he fell 
asleep, to wake no more on pain or weari- 
ness in any hour thereafter. I passed from 
one to another; and when I found one lying 
wide-eyed in the stillness I sat down beside 
him quietly for a little while. We do not 
need to pray in uttered words, in such a 
moment, on the verge of night. And some 
lifted up their brows for a good-bye touch 
ere I turned to go. Pulpits are cold places, 
spoken words seem empty, after that. 
Phrases would falter into tears if one tried 
to speak. 

When I went out it was raining, big 
heavy drops falling through the black night, 
like weeping out of somewhere. And the 
ambulances were steadily coming in. I 
stood among the others with a lantern, and 
looked into the face of every man that was 
carried past. And lo! after sixty or so had 
gone by, there was the face of the man I 
sought for, looking up at me. What a shout 
of recognition passed between us, as he was 
carried on, through the rain, to the tent. 

The people at home have reason to be 
proud of their boys, their husbands, and 
their sweethearts. The dawn of the Big 
Push broke through a heavy mist, and the 



88 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

continuous crash of the big guns tore the 
German trenches till they were like a 
ploughed field. And when the order was 
given, the men went "over the top," and 
walked across the slope, as cool as if on field 
manoeuvres, and smote the terror-stricken 
foe into defeat. There were no jealousies 
then. Said one Englishman to me, "We 
were to support the Highlanders. They got 
it hot from machine guns. And for a mo- 
ment my heart stood still, as we saw their 
line swerve under it for a breathing space 
— for you know, sir, what splendid stickers 
the kilties be." 

"My God!" said another. "The Germans 
fear the kilts. If we'd all had kilts the war 
might have been over by now !" 

The bitter lessons of former advances 
were written deep on our memory. Every- 
body knew what he was to do, and where 
he was to go. There was no risk taken, as 
formerly, when the forward rush of im- 
petuously brave regiments had carried them 
beyond the reach of reinforcements, and 
failure had come swiftly up on the heels of 
success. 

We shall be beginning again soon. But 
the men are under no delusions. They have 



MEETINGS AND PARTINGS 89 

clearly before them the facts that, no mat- 
ter what it is costing, it is a price not only 
to be paid but worth the paying, and that 
the Germans must have no weak-kneed 
mercy shown them ; for they have not played 
the game, and can only understand the 
meaning of the evil they have loosened on 
the world when they see it flattened in in- 
dubitable defeat, and crushed into absolute 
impotence for the future. That is why we 
all object to pictures in the daily Press of 
grinning groups in khaki as types of what 
we are. We are not downhearted, but we 
know too well the inner significance of war 
to pose like idiots at a picnic. 



IN THE HIGHLANDS 

The wind and the wave at their wildest 

Are beating upon the isle, 
And you, for all that was dearest 

Are absent, many a mile. 
The corn is ready for gathering, 

Whenever the skies are blue; 
So we light our lamp in the gloaming, 

And silently think of you. 

Dear lad! we can never forget you, 

Who went with the willing men, 
When the call for the best came ringing 

Along by the moor and glen. 
Your dust is asleep in Flanders, 

Because your heart was true ; 
So we light our lamp in the gloaming 

And silently think of you, 

'Tis not a long road to the meeting, 

When the world's deep pain is o'er. 
We'll patiently toil till the shadows 

Sink over the sea and shore; 
And then, when the last hour's sinking. 

And we wait for the Love we knew, 
We'll light our lamp in the gloaming. 

And silently think of you. 

L. McL. W. 



91 



VII 

THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 

A GREAT deal has been spoken and writ- 
ten on the subject of the religion of our 
army. When I was out first, at the begin- 
ning of the war, nothing impressed me more 
than the deep atmosphere of devotion which 
pervaded the men in the camps. This was, 
after all, most natural, for the men who 
were carried oversea on the first wave of the 
movement were the absolute cream of the 
country, borne out of the professions and 
the trades on a great impulse of enthusiasm, 
stirred to the depth by the noblest ideals. 
They had willingly turned their backs on 
home and friends, on love and comfort, for 
the sake of all that was very dear and pre- 
cious. And it meant everything to them; 
so that they were susceptible in the very 
highest degree. Volunteers in every great 
cause are always idealists. The tide of re- 
ligion that swept over them was like a vast 

93 



94 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

contagion of enthusiasm ; and one can never 
forget what it meant in the Y.M.C.A. 
huts, and places where prayer was wont to 
be made. Had the war finished in the first 
few months I do beHeve the returning wave 
of life that had been touched by passionate 
faith would have lifted our old world to the 
feet of Christ. But the war has dragged 
on its weary length, and the mass of hu- 
manity in khaki in the Land of War is much 
more miscellaneous, while religion is much 
more a matter of the individual to-day than 
it was then. Men are touched and uplifted, 
out of their own experiences. A man feels 
his own circumstances much more intense- 
ly. Prayer, or rather prayerfulness, is a 
thing that falls around him in his moment 
of particular stress. For example, a North 
of Ireland man, who had lain out wounded 
for three days between the trenches, said 
to me, ''I had surrendered hope, but not 
faith. And when at last I was tenderly 
picked up and carried out of it, I felt that 
my prayers had been answered, and that I 
was right to believe in God." 

My own experience confirms this. It is 
very difficult in a moment of immediate per- 
sonal danger to remember the danger of 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 95 

others, for it is strange how suddenly crowd- 
ed your heart and brain become. I have 
never had the feeling which some drowning 
men have had, of all one's past life rushing 
by in a close-packed procession, but under 
shell fire something not unlike it is awak- 
ened by the screaming death that hurtles 
overhead. One cannot easily avoid a spasm 
of prayerfulness then, but it has within it a 
sudden question as to the selfishness of the 
individual thought, and one finds the cry 
for the protection of others leap swiftly to 
the heels of the prayer for one's own safety. 
Above all, you pray for steadfastness, for 
the fear of being afraid is our greatest fear 
then. Sometimes, too, more strongly than 
on other occasions, there comes a strange 
assurance that the horrid missile is not for 
you. In my first baptism of fire I felt that, 
as certain as my own existence; and yet I 
believe I shall never again be nearer death 
until I cross the threshold of the invisible. 
Into my heart or head — I cannot quite say 
which — came these words of my favourite 
psalm : 

The Lord's my light and saving health, 
Who shall make me dismayed ? 



96 THE HEART OF 'A SOLDIER 

It kept ringing all the time, until I could 
scarcely believe that I had not been shouting 
it aloud. I suppose something like that has 
been within the experience of every one in 
similar circumstances; and yet perhaps I 
have not felt so sure of safety in later times 
of danger. It is what your self comes 
through that makes and shapes your faith, 
and the most subtle arguments can never 
shake it thereafter. ''I have seen, there- 
fore I do believe," is the impregnable re- 
sult. Hence it is that the religion of our 
army to-day in the field is much more per- 
sonal than it was formerly, in proportion as 
the soul has looked more closely into the 
great Mystery, in the actual Valley of the 
Shadow itself. The enthusiasms of the 
earlier day might not have endured in the 
return to home conditions; the eyes that 
have been opened to-day will never be blind 
again. It will not' mean a rally to the up- 
lifted shibboleths of ancient sects, but it 
must result in a strengthened hold upon the 
real meaning of the immanence of the Di- 
vine in everything that has true significance 
for the destiny of humanity. The indi- 
vidual is, and always has been, the moulder 
of the mass. You are not to expect an army 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 97 

of saints and enthusiasts coming back, with 
shining faces, when the men return. Many 
will be just as intensely difficult, perhaps 
more intensely difficult, social problems as 
before they left to fight for king and coun- 
try. But multitudes have been touched with 
the mystery of the Unseen. They have 
rubbed shoulders with Life and Death and 
seen the eternal shining before them in the 
dark hour. They have made vows and reso- 
lutions for the better life. These things will 
influence the days that are to be, if the fire 
in their hearts be not quenched by coldness 
in the hearts of the people at home, and the 
song that has been stirred by the revelation 
of noble ideals be not silenced by the revival 
of old selfishnesses here. 

The formal religion of the old soldier is 
sometimes a very strange thing. I heard of 
one who, when asked, said, *'Let me see. I 
think I was Roman Catholic in the South 
African War. I'd better be the same in 
this." While another was put down in the 
hospital list as "Fatalist." When I asked 
him why, he replied that it was to save 
trouble. But after I had shown him that he 
only gave trouble, I found he was willing 
to be a Methodist or "anything decent." 



98 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

Something which cannot be analyzed or 
described seems to enter into supreme suf- 
fering. I remember one young Scotsman — 
stalwart, blue-eyed, and patient, with his 
face severely burned, his hair and beard like 
charcoal, and his eyes almost sealed up by 
the scorching flame that had seared him, 
saying to me, when I asked him how he was, 
"Oh, I'm fine, thank you. Ye ken, a body 
maun do his duty." And the reply of an- 
other was, "I canna complain. I'm nae that 
bad, efter an' a'." 

This patience seems sometimes almost as 
much a gift conferred as faith itself. One 
day, after a big fight, I saw a fine fellow 
having his back dressed. He had just been 
brought in, with several wounds, one espe- 
cially terrible in its severity. But he made 
neither motion nor sound. A soldier said 
to me, "That poor chap is paralyzed. He 
has no feeling." Just then, everything being 
completed, the bandage was put on, and he 
was turned over. All his pent-up endurance 
broke forth in a cry of agony, "Oh, my God 
— I am done in !" I slipped very quietly for- 
ward, and he looked up in my face with a 
smile. "Pardon me. Padre," he said. "I 
was a fool. I had no right to speak, when 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 99 

I*m sure there are many worse than me 
here." What a brave fight he made, day by 
day, always giving us a bright welcome and 
a quiet good-night, till he could recognize 
us no more, and passed to his rest, outworn. 
One felt as though a brother had died, and 
you could not help looking next day for the 
brave face on the pillow, which so often had 
nerved us, who were strong, for the work 
that awaited us. 

And it was usually so. One day a poor 
boy was crying aloud that he could not en- 
dure the pain of what was but a compara- 
tively slight wound. I tried to steady him 
by the old plan of directing his attention to 
the greater suffering which was being quiet- 
ly borne by those around him. But he 
pointed to his neighbour in the adjacent bed, 
and said, ''That's all very well, but he is 
comfortable compared with me." "Yes, 
chum," replied the other, "I have only 
twelve wounds, that have to be dressed three 
times daily." It made more than the com- 
plaining man think a little; and he hushed 
his cries for a while. 

Some of the Scottish came down about 
this time — a fine set of stalwarts. One of 
them, in great pain, said to me, "It's a wild 



100 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

game this, maister." They seemed to think 
of it, wondrously fittingly, as a scramble — 
the wildest sport, surely, in which men ever 
shared, with life for football, and death 
clutching in the "scrum." 

The people at home can have no concep- 
tion of what the preparations for a great ad- 
vance are like. Everywhere one felt that 
something colossal was ripening. A vast ac- 
tivity was constantly clattering along the 
roads. The stream of cavalry, the great 
heavy guns, the field kitchens that rattled 
sleep out of the dark hours, the waggons 
whose passing shook the loosened plaster 
down from the walls of wayside houses, the 
train-loads of infantry who cheered out of 
their horse-boxes as they were carried up the 
line through the level crossings, all told of 
the accumulating of a stupendous force for 
something out of the ordinary. 

All the time rumour ran wild. She has a 
habit of doing so, gabbling as she runs. I 
cannot forget what we felt when the first 
news of the Jutland battle seemed to inti- 
mate something like disaster at sea. For 
some days it kept a heavy shadow and a 
curious stillness over us, as though a grey 
haar had drifted in from the face of the 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 101 

waters. And again, when there came a 
night whisper of the loss of the Hampshire, 
with Kitchener and his staff on board. 
Along with that, like a clumsy codicil to a 
sensational will, was a statement that the 
German Crown Prince had surrendered at 
Verdun. The codicil seemed to us to make 
the other statement invalid. But alas! the 
one was only too true, while its neighbour 
was a lie. And then, as the reality of the 
loss soaked into our consciousness, we felt 
that surely at last the country would be 
awakened truly to the actual stern facts of 
the war, that those who were dwelling in a 
fool's paradise would be convinced of their 
folly, and those who were hindering the 
sorely needed supplies of munitions would 
be ashamed of their selfishness. As a sol- 
dier said to me, ''It was terrible in the be- 
ginning of the war, when we were scarce of 
men and material, when we were just hang- 
ing on, and could do little more, and some- 
times scarcely that, to think how the people 
at home seemed to be forgetful, with their 
strikes and complacent maxims, of how 
much it meant for us." Germany kept her- 
self wide-eyed, fostering her strength for 
the great day. I suppose that for years past 



102 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

scarce a man in Germany has stooped to 
loose or lace his boots, but the shadow of 
what was coming stooped with him. We 
had to face a very severe operation for our 
national cataract, and swallow at a gulp a 
very bitter tonic when Tragedy struck the 
gong awaking Europe to the horror of war. 

The Chaplain sometimes gets a curious 
tonic against the complacency which is apt 
to settle over every official. I was amazed 
one day, after I had prayed with a rough- 
looking man, when he clutched my arm and 
prayed, also, for the young lives that were 
suffering, and for the chaplains, doctors, 
and nurses — a beautiful and touching pray- 
er. He was a Wesleyan, and certainly I 
found these among the most devout and pa- 
tient men I ever met, with the "root of the 
matter" in them. 

The uncertainties of things are very 
vividly learned by us out here. A little 
Welsh lad asked me to write his mother, 
who was offering to send him gifts. "Tell 
her," said he, "that I'm down for home, and 
I'll not be here when they arrive." I wrote 
to her accordingly; and next day when I 
went to see him his bed was empty. In the 
night he had quietly and suddenly passed 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 103 

away in his sleep. There are more ways 
home than across the Channel. Our words 
are sometimes more prophetic than we 
know. 

The men were not at that time bitter 
against the Germans, though they strongly 
resented the brutality of their conduct. One 
boy, wounded severely through the chest, 
had serious complications added to his con- 
dition by having been compelled to lie out 
all day. He pointed along to a bed in the 
tent. ^'That's another German they're 
nursing," said he. *'We are kinder to their 
wounded than they are to ours. That's why 
I'm here like this, for I had to lie out there 
till I nearly died. Two of my chums started 
to crawl after they were struck down; but 
the Germans shot them dead, for they fired 
on all our wounded. So I lay still till the 
dark." And many told the same sad story. 

In the Big Push of July 19 16 I spoke to 
a wounded South African Scot. He had 
been in the forest fighting, so terribly un- 
speakable in its intensity; and he told me 
that some of the Medical Corps had gone 
forward to help some wounded Germans. 
After they had succoured them and given 
them water, and were departing, the mis- 



io4j the heart of a soldier 

creants turned and shot their benefactors 
dead. Judgment followed swift, however, 
upon the unspeakable crime. 

Sometimes one could not keep from 
laughing even at one's fellow-countrymen. 
I came across one, solemn, long-faced and 
lantern-jawed, the most depressed figure I 
have seen in this war-time, ''What's the 
matter ?" I asked. And he answered in most 
lugubrious tones, "I've a sair inside." Later 
on I saw him standing in solitary melancholy 
among some others who were merry, and I 
said, "Cheer up, man. Why are you so 
dowie?" But he replied, with some indigna- 
tion, "Because I've a sair inside. And I 
dinna ken naebody here." 

Truly our Scottish nature is a most re- 
markable conglomerate. Many a rash in- 
quirer has lost his way in its countless rami- 
fications. Nobody can be more sociable than 
a Scot. In fact, his weaknesses, which have 
sometimes made the world blush, arise most 
frequently from this sociable tendency. Yet 
nobody can dwell more apart, at times, from 
his fellows. Not infrequently I have heard 
— "I aye keeps mysel' to mysel' in the regi- 
ment." At the same time, nobody can be 
capable of more varied nobilities, and even 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 105 

almost grotesque splendours of sacrifice, for 
the sake of an ideal. For example, I 
knew a man so delicate that he had to fol- 
low an indoor occupation all his life, and 
yet he made no fewer than twenty attempts 
to enlist at the beginning of the war, trying 
every branch of the service except the Royal 
Army Medical Corps. I suggested this last 
to him, as he might be of use in an ambu- 
lance. But he who had knocked so often 
at the doors of recruiting offices, and had 
stood in bitter weather in the long lines of 
those who wished to fight their nation's bat- 
tles, shook his head and grew pale. "Ach, 
no!" he said, with a shudder, "ye see, the 
sicht o' bluid aye gars me grue." 

It is not a unique experience to find the 
truly brave warrior anything but a blood- 
thirsty villain. Most of them are quiet, 
"cannie" men, sensitive to the beauty of 
the world, and of all sweet and tender 
things. At a time when many kind folks 
at home were sending white heather as a 
loving message across the sea, I saw a let- 
ter from one who had been a game-keeper 
in times of peace, and who certainly had 
not walked the woods and fields with eyes 
shut and heart barred against the pleadings 



106 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

of Nature's glamour and the charm of the 
wilds. Here are a few paragraphs to prove 
it. He said: 

"I was just going to ask you to send me 
a sprig of white heather, so you will know 
how pleased I was to get what you sent. 
How sweetly it smells, and what pleasant 
memories it recalls to an exile! Never was 
heather more highly prized. You know the 
song, My Ain Folk? Well, it sums up the 
situation. There is no place like old Scot- 
land to me, and that heather speaks to my 
heart and memory. I can imagine myself 
treading the moors, gun in hand. I can 
hear the 'Come back! come back!' of an old 
cock grouse as he gets up far out of shot. 
Then the drive home, tired but happy; and 
some one standing at the door asking what 
sort of day we have had. Then tea, and 
the day's doings gone over again — the shots 
we missed, and how we got a brace here 
and snipe there. These were happy days, 
which I hope, with God's help, will be yet 
renewed. ... I have met some very nice 
chaps in my travels; but now, of course, 
everybody is in this, and it is not like the 
soldiering of old. I have even had a pleas- 
ant chat with a poacher, who told me tales, 



THE SOLDIER'S RELIGION 107 

with much zest, of how he had killed sal- 
mon and snared rabbits. I hope he will be 
spared to return and wield the rod and cleek 
again, even though it may cost somebody 
trouble to watch him. . . . There are some 
nice coveys of partridges where we are, 
and I often take a dander just to have the 
pleasure of seeing them in the evening- 
time." 

Is it a wonder that there is something in 
a Chaplain's life worth having when there 
are men with feelings like these to mix with 
and to share a quiet talk, often? The Uni- 
versities at home have emptied; but in the 
land of war there is a great college of hu- 
man nature where a man with a respon- 
sive soul may learn deeper things than ever 
a lecture-room held for him in the days that 
are no more. 

He learns that tender domestic affection, 
fidelity to the hearts at home, and manhood 
true till death for honour's sake are things 
that are not far from the kingdom of 
heaven. And he believes in the Mercy of 
God and the pity of Christ more than he ever 
did before. There are things that transcend 
our creeds, and more ways to heaven than 
theologians have ever squabbled over. 



VIII 

THE MEANING OF THINGS 

How little the usual short paragraph in 
the newspaper conveys to the easy-minded 
folks at home of what may be the signifi- 
cance of an apparently trivial move. You 
read that a raid was made on the enemy's 
lines at So-and-so, and useful information 
gained. But what we know, on the spot, is 
that perhaps forty men went out over No 
Man's Land, and bombed and bayoneted the 
enemy in a trench forward in the night. 
Three were killed, five are crawling in, and 
fifteen or sixteen returned wounded more 
or less severely. That little party, creeping 
along back to our trenches, through the 
gloom, or in the misty morning, or lying all 
day in a hole, waiting for the pitiful cover 
of the darkness for another stage, or for 
help to come, does not easily slip from im- 
agination and memory. And as you peep 
out over the ruin-entangled dismal bit of 
ground in which they lie somewhere wait- 

io8 



THE MEANING OF THINGS 109 

ing, it is a big slice of concentrated human 
history that is graven on your heart. Yet 
there are many at home into whose minds 
that fact does not percolate, because they 
cannot steel themselves to listen to the truth, 
or because they prefer to live in a fool's 
paradise. Nothing can be worse or more 
entirely reprehensible than the heart shut 
and the eye closed against the splendid sacri- 
fice and sufferings of the brave. 

Let it be known widely and thoroughly 
that every day and every hour this terrible 
thing is prolonged Tragedy and Cruelty are 
having a longer innings against civilization, 
jind that the sooner the hideous ambition 
v/hich plunged our sunny world into black- 
ness of pain is crushed and slain the sooner 
will hope, and liberty, and life, and love have 
scope again. If it is not folly, it is coward- 
ice and betrayal of the brave, otherwise. 
Let the people at home have the chance of 
facing things fully and squarely, in know- 
ledge as clear as those who suffer out here, 
and the full victory which alone can bring 
peace shall come swiftly. 

I remember a raw officer who stood be- 
side some of us, while a terrible bombard- 
ment shook the night. In the bravado of 



110 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

inexperience he said with a laugh, "That 
won't keep me from my sleep." We said 
nothing; but, in the morning, after I had 
buried some of the boys who had suffered, 
I said to him, in a place apart, "Don't ever 
speak like that again to those who know. 
What did not affect you meant death to men 
as brave as any of us could be, and sorrow 
unspeakable to hearts as dear as any whom 
we love." And he understood. For, after 
all, he was no fool, as subsequent events 
amply proved. 

The interest which the people of the 
French towns and villages showed at the 
beginning of the war in the Scottish soldiers 
has not abated. The pipers are the great 
centre of interest in France, however, and 
the wild flourish of the drummers thrills 
the crowd. In big towns, just as much as 
in sleepy villages, the excitement is great 
when in the evening the kilted fellows swing 
down to the square to play the "Retreat," 
with which the day of a Highland corps is 
closed. I remember what a cosmopolitan 
mob got around our men in one place. Our 
own Indians of every kind, Algerians and 
Nigerians, and all sorts of French soldiers, 
as well as the representative classes of the 



THE MEANING OF THINGS 111 

place, formed a great circle, and loud was 
the applause which greeted the performance. 
The pipers played the well-known march 
founded on the melody known to Highland- 
ers as Tha an ciian a chuir eagal air clannU 
nan Gaidheal — ''The sea's putting fear on 
the sons of the Gael," that is, the fear which 
is the awe that springs from sorrow of part- 
ing. And as it rang through that square, 
waking echoes among the tall houses in a 
foreign land, one could not help thinking 
of the grief in the glens and through the is- 
lands away across the waters, when one 
remembered that in Skye alone there is 
scarcely a home, if indeed there be any, that 
does not miss for ever on earth the footfall 
and the voice of a beloved one. And it 
means for us, the children of the Gael, 
something which I think is more than for 
other folks. It means the thinning out of 
an ancient race, the fading of one of the old 
languages of Europe, and a great unbridged 
blank in a generation. The changes which 
have taken place in the Highlands in a cen- 
tury have been vast, but this war means 
something as swift and sudden as the blow- 
ing out of a candle, or the drawing of a cur- 
tain — for many wide districts, indeed, the 



112 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

end of an old song. Think what that pip- 
ing meant in some of the French villages, 
when the pipers played in the dark on Hog- 
manay night, "taking in the New Year," in 
places where such music had never been 
heard before. 

What a lesson for the divided Churches 
at home is often given us here! And espe- 
cially where the dead are laid to rest. There 
is no wall of division in the last sleep. Ro- 
man Catholic is laid between Episcopalian 
and Presbyterian. There is no distinction. 
God sorts out the souls of the brave, who 
lie side by side till the day of the Great 
Awakening. A burial service in St. Paul's 
is poor alongside of ours, where the guns 
thunder out responses and aniens to the 
committal words, "I am the Resurrection 
and the Life, saith the Lord." It might 
amaze our domestic bigots, of all faiths, to 
find Jesuit priest and Presbyterian minister 
working and sleeping in wondrous unity. I 
shared a tent for som.e time with a Jesuit 
Father. I am a true blue Presbyterian, and 
he was a strong Jesuit ; but my Presbyterian- 
ism was not contaminated by his Jesuitry, 
nor his Jesuitry touched by my Presbyterian- 
ism. I carried always the flag of my coun- 



THE MEANING OF THINGS 113 

try, which is the flag of my faith, and fixed it 
up wherever we were, and when the Roman 
Catholic soldier wanted to find his priest he 
found him by coming to where the Presby- 
terian banner hung beside our door. We 
were often quietly teased as ''the Incorpo- 
rated Society of St. Peter and St. Andrew." 
The principal Chaplain, who is an Irish 
Presbyterian, has as his personal stafif two 
priests of another Order; while the lists of 
decorations awarded to Roman Catholic 
chaplains prove that they certainly by no 
means suffer through association with our 
Protestant Churches. 

Nothing can be more moving than the 
bugle ringing out "The Last Post" over the 
sleeping brave. That call is a real bit of 
poetry; and the heart almost breaks on the 
last upward note, half-question and half- 
faith, calling heavenward through the void. 
I can never forget the power of it once, at 
home, when we unveiled a monument to 
those who had fallen in South Africa. The 
street was crowded with people. A deep 
cloud was gathering along the hills. I got 
the Colonel to read the long list of the fallen, 
the roll-call of heroes. Then the buglers 
blew "The Last Post." And, as if in an- 



114 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

swer to the summons, out of the mountains 
dashed a blast of hail, as though the shades 
of the dead swept by. The crowd cowered 
before it, their faces white with awe, as hav- 
ing been touched by the breath of the Un- 
seen. Out here, when that pleading note 
rises heavenwards, I seem to be present at 
the resurrection morn. The men feel it also. 
For sentiment is always very near the sur- 
face of a soldier, especially in an army such 
as ours at present is. My first servant was 
an old soldier, whose fighting days began in 
the Soudan, and in every subsequent cam- 
paign he had borne his share. His only boy 
and he had fought in the same struggle in 
this war, and the lad fell. And sometimes, 
in the shadows of evening, he would talk a 
little; and then his voice would deepen into 
feeling, and he would say: ''Sir, a body 
canna help but think; and I do my thinking 
oftenest in the nicht-time, when I canna 
sleep. I never go to lie down in my bed but 
I mind my laddie, lyin' oot yonder, withoot 
a sod to cover him, in the dark. An auld 
sodger disna greet often, but whiles I wish 
sairly that I could just put my heid doon, 
and find the ease o' tears." I do indeed be- 
lieve that as heavy a burden as our men 



THE MEANING OF THINGS 115 

have often to bear is just this burden of 
tears unshed. 

And it is a kind of personal faith that 
upholds them. I told recently of the power 
of the individual experience in the moulding 
of the religion of the soldier. I recall a 
striking instance, confirmatory of this fact. 
I was passing through a tent of wounded 
men, and spoke for a little to one whose face 
and arms had been flayed by the sun. He 
was a man of considerable education. It 
was apparent, of course, that he had been 
lying out for a while. After a brief talk 
I passed on. But, moved by a sudden im- 
pulse, I turned back and prayed with him. 
*Tadre," he said, "I did not always believe 
in that sort of thing. But now I believe. 
I was lying in a shell hole, badly hit. And 
the sun was burning me like flame. So I 
cried out somehow in my heart that it might 
abate its torture. And slowly a little cloud, 
like a veil, stole over the sun's face, and I 
found relief. And then I really prayed that 
the night might be so dark as to permit a 
search party to get out my length, or that I 
might be able to creep in near our lines. And 
the night came down, moonless and starless, 
and black as pitch. Was that not an an- 



116 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

swer to my cry? At any rate, I can never 
forget; and remembrance holds me firm to 
my belief." 

Sometimes one finds in the Scottish sol- 
dier a wonderful faith, but, much more than 
with the Englishman, an attachment to the 
kirk or the minister at home. In fact, the 
case is exceedingly rare of a Scotsman with- 
out Church connection of some kind. If 
one meets it, the man is usually deeply 
ashamed, and does not quite acknowledge it. 
I remember one who had a stammer, and 
who came from the vicinity of my own par- 
ish. "What church do you go to?" I asked. 
And he replied, "Eh-eh-eh— I forget its 
name." "But," I persisted, "you'll remem- 
ber the name of your minister?" And then, 
with a whimsical look of perplexity, he said, 
amid the laughter of his comrades, "Eh-eh- 
eh. Dod, if it hisna gane clean oot o' my 
heid." Another was "kirkgreedy." And 
one day, as I was going through his tent, he 
began to weep aloud. A sister said, "Why 
are you crying, Mac?" "I'm greetin'," he 
sobbed, "because I see my minister comin'." 

Even in very desperate circumstances a 
Scotsman's humour does not forsake him. 
One day an English orderly said to me. 



THE MEANING OF THINGS llT 

"There's a big Scotsman here, with a sore 
head wound, practically unconscious, and 
we can't get anything either out of him or 
into him. Would you speak to him?" He 
had the Gordon kilt below his bed, so I had 
at least one hint to go upon. In broad Aber- 
donian, I said, "Faur are ye frae, man?" 
And his voice, strangely far away, replied, 
"Frae Aiberdeen, of coorse — faur ither?" 
"You're a Gordon, aren't you?" I asked. 
"Of coorse. Fat else wad I be?" was the 
answer. The orderly gave me a spoon and 
asked me to get him to take what was in it. 
But he began to try to drink instead of sup- 
ping. So I said to him, "It's a speen, man. 
It's nae a bottle." "Ay," said again that 
far-off voice, with a touch of fun in it, "but 
maybe I'm mair accustomed to a bottle." He 
kept asking if we were not near the shore 
yet. I fancy the flapping canvas of the tent 
made him think he was on board a ship, sail- 
ing for home. 

One sees hard enough cases out here, but 
the hardest I have seen was that of a man 
who was really only a small bundle lying 
in bed. They had been cleaning up billets 
where he was, and somebody had thrown a 
lot of cartridges in the fire along with some 



118 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

swept-up straw and rubbish. Just as he 
was standing warming himself these had 
exploded, and the carelessness of his com- 
rades had cost him his right eye, his right 
leg and arm. Many a man would have 
cursed his destiny, but this little Irishman 
only smiled sadly, and said, "The only thing 
I'm sorry for is that it wasn't in the firing 
line, and not in battle, that I got it." 

His case was very different from that of 
another with a deep wound in his thigh. He 
was indeed a man with a charmed life. For 
he had been going up the trench with bombs 
in his pocket, when a piece of shell had 
struck him on the leg. If it had struck the 
bombs he would have been among the stars 
in a second. 

Yet another was perfectly happy, al- 
though his wound had been caused by a shell 
from our own guns. ''It's one of Lloyd 
George's," said he, "and I don't grudge itl 
I only hope there's plenty more coming out, 
for that means victory." 

May the folks at home answer his hope 
fully! 



IX 
OFFICERS AND MEN 

A DEJPARTMKNT which is much forgotten 
by the people at home is the transport in the 
field. The officers in charge of that have 
to be wise men, brave soldiers, and com- 
panions of the order of the kindly heart. 
I saw that in the Gordons, very strikingly. 

When we were on a long trek, the quar- 
termaster always rode off in early morn- 
ing, long before the dawn, to the place which 
was to be our terminus, and there he had 
a hard and busy time fixing up billets for 
us all. At the last stage of our daily march 
he appeared again at the head of the col- 
umn, and guided us to the close of our jour- 
ney. I often wondered if he knew how his 
appearance was welcomed right along the 
ranks. The men would say: "There's the 
captain. We'll soon be all right." When 
operations were on, his tired eyes knew no 
sleep, his kind heart kept awake, his feet 
knew no weariness, while the men had to be 

119 



1^0 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

helped and their comfort seen to. All day 
and half the night he toiled without a 
grudge. For he was a true soldier of the old 
breed, a type of the best the British Army 
can produce ; and he knew, for he had often 
himself experienced, the hardships of the 
march, the conflict, and the camp. He had 
won distinction for fearless courage and 
devoted attention to duty everywhere, and 
the double row of ribbons on his breast has 
amongst them more than one proof of cour- 
age in the field. His tunic is, in fact, a bit 
of the history of the British Empire, over 
long years of service. I have been beside 
him in some trying and unpleasant mo- 
ments, and I know his soul. When he has 
secured the best possible for officers and 
men, a brick fl.oor in a kitchen somewhere, 
or a muddy corner anywhere, was enough 
for him. And when any one asked, 
'Where's the captain?" we would say, ''Oh, 
he's all right. Give him two bricks, a blan- 
ket, and a draught, and he's sure of a dream- 
less sleep." His campaigning spread over 
five or six years at least, altogether. Men 
in offices and at Base jobs figure often in 
dispatches, but none deserve more thanks 
of soldiers and of citizens than such war- 



OFFICERS AND MEN 121 

hardened and war-aged officers, who are to 
be found steadily and constantly enduring 
and achieving, without haste, without rest, 
and without waste, in all our areas of ac- 
tivity at the front, to-day and always. 

Every night when the men are in the 
trenches he goes up with the transport corps, 
with food and water, along roads that are 
torn to pieces by bombardment, swept 
periodically by machine gun and shell, and 
blocked frequently by wreckage, human and 
material. Often he and his men have to lie 
in ditches till the hail of death passes by. 
But the rations go up. The task is never 
dodged. Death alone would be valid ex- 
cuse in such a case for quartermaster and 
transport officer. 

The latter, with us, in the Gordons, is a 
man who never before served in any army. 
He was once a rancher in Montana and else- 
where. He has a beautiful home in quiet 
fields in England. But he has gone through 
harder times than many a trained soldier, 
without flinching and without talk, and no 
dispatch has ever seen his name in it up to 
date. He is quite contented, having done 
his duty. 

But with all of them it is the same. Our 



122 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

transport officer in the Black Watch was a 
young farmer from the Forfarshire High- 
land line. And every evening he goes up 
with his men as calmly as though he were 
only taking a turn around his farmyard ere 
he went in for the night. And the quarter- 
master, a quiet man whose dreams are of his 
garden, near the sea, shares the journey, 
wondering if he will ever again potter about 
his bushes with his pruning shears in a 
summer evening, forgetting the shadows of 
to-day. 

As for the men of the transport, they are 
also worthy of a nation's thanks, though 
they seldom, if ever, are thought of for 
gratitude by anybody. Because, of course, 
it is only their duty, also, after all. The 
tailors, shoemakers, servants, and disabled 
are amongst them. But they are brave as 
any who have ever faced danger in the dark. 
Our pipers and drummers in the Gordons 
are now with them. And one night one of 
our oldest men, a piper, who had left a good 
easy situation in London and rejoined for 
the war — a man nearer sixty than fifty — 
showed the stuff that was in him. They 
were going up the '^duckboards" when a 
shower of shrapnel came over, and every- 



OFFICERS AND MEN 123 

body at once took cover. "Where have they 
gone to?" asked the quartermaster. And 
the piper leapt forward and cried, "Come 
on, you beggars! Follow me, and I'll show 
you how a Gordon goes through that." The 
men rallied to the cry, and went up through 
it all, and brought the rations to the waiting 
trench. Less than that has got a D.C.M. 
before now. 

The lives of the men in general make a 
personal appeal of irresistible power to 
those who live and work among them. You 
hear it from those who, after all, are mere 
passing visitors, who work at Base camps 
and come in contact with them only at a 
distance from the sphere of activities, and 
who are impressed by the distant roar of 
the guns, or even the sound of artillery at 
practice, if, indeed, they ever hear any. But 
when you live with them at the front, and 
are touched, all around, by their devotion, 
courage, and strength of heart, it never can 
leave your memory. A chat over a cup of 
coffee in a Church hut or a walk through a 
Base hospital is enlightening and moving, 
but it misses the full-eyed gaze into the grim, 
terrible, and wonderful reality which is 
given to the Chaplain of a regiment. Be- 



124 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

cause, naturally, it misses the source of it all. 
And it is fine to learn and know that this is 
not the feeling and experience of the Chap- 
lain only, but of the officers who command 
and lead those bravest of the brave. One, 
home on sick leave, said to me: "If I am 
spared to return to civil life, after the war 
is over, I don't know what I'll do. I'll be so 
utterly lonely without the boys. They are 
so kind and true. One can joke with them 
and be frank with them, and yet they never 
presume, or take a liberty with one's frank- 
ness." And this is my own experience. The 
army is a bit of real ore in the mud of war. 
And the future of the Empire should be 
much enriched by the passing of this pre- 
cious element through the present furnace 
of trial. 

Of course, much of this depends on the 
kind of officer. The Gordon battalion with 
which I served was in my day fortunate 
above many in this respect. To begin with, 
it is one of the original Highland regi- 
ments, whose record is encrusted with glory 
of imperial service; but our commanding 
officer was the ideal leader and friend of the 
men whom he led. His thoughts were 
always with them. He was a man of notable 



OFFICERS AND MEN 125 

courage, the testimony to which he wore 
deservedly on his breast. I remember how, 
at the end of a long march, he would not sit 
down till he had gone over the billets to see 
if his men were all right and comfortably 
housed. And his kind-heartedness won its 
full reward in the joy with which they served 
him and the loyalty with which they followed 
him unhesitatingly to victory or death. I 
thought that I should never weep again ; but 
when I heard, not long since, how he fell, I 
went into a quiet place and wept like a 
woman over her son. For he was a Bayard, 
without fear and without reproach. Thank 
God! he is not the only one in the ranks of 
the brave to-day. For a regiment is like a 
family, and takes its tune and tone from the 
head of the house. 

One cannot sometimes keep from laugh- 
ing, even in circumstances of great danger, 
to hear what engages the attention of the 
men. Once, when the transport was going 
up, a burst of bombardment broke across 
them. And seeing some excitement for- 
ward, we rode along in case of anything 
having happened. But it was just a couple 
of men quarrelling, even amidst shot and 



126 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

shell, as to the wages that were paid to the 
moulders at Falkirk. 

A friend of mine similarly thinking, dur- 
ing a heavy shell-fire, that a tragedy had 
taken place in a dug-out, from the loud- 
voiced talk which was going on, crept up 
near, and heard one Scotsman laying down 
the law to another. ''You're wrang, Sandy," 
he was shouting. "Harry Lauder made his 
first appearance in the Paveelion in Glesca. 
I was there, and I mind it fine." And the 
crash of artillery deafened the other's reply. 
Another told me how, after a terrible bit of 
fighting, when he got shelter, a man, whom 
he knew, crept in beside him, and all he 
could think of saying was, "Hullo, when 
did you get your stripe?" 

Every day I used to go up the trenches 
when the Gordons were in them, to chat with 
the men. It cheered them, I think, to see 
one who was not a combatant walking free- 
ly there. And if there was anything coming 
over, I liked to get along to its locality, for 
I have seen the presence of a non-fighting 
man, without weapons, steady the young fel- 
lows, who might, for a little, feel panicky. 
One day, in the middle of a hot time, a shell 
landed right in the river which ran quite 



OFFICERS AND MEN 127 

near, and it threw up a most beautiful geyser 
of blue water into the sunshine. It lifted 
everybody's mind off the horrid episode 
through which we were passing, and a whis- 
per of admiration ran along the trench. 

It is amusing, also, to observe how the 
men receive anything which the enemy 
achieves. One day, in camp, there was not 
a speck of any kind in the sky — a peculiarly 
quiet day it was. Overhead hung an ob- 
servation balloon, one of the many eyes of 
the army. We had grown to feel this as a 
real neighbour. Suddenly an aeroplane, 
with the British markings on it, swept along, 
and "poppity-popped" at the balloon, and 
then swung by. But it instantly turned, 
swooped back, and rattled a salvo into the 
swaying bag of gas, which at once ignited, 
flinging up a great dark flame, and the at- 
tacker sped swiftly away. The riddled bal- 
loon, blazing, began to sink, and the ob- 
server leapt overboard with his parachute, 
dropping like a stone till within one hundred 
feet of the ground, when the parachute 
opened, and he landed safely. "Thae Ger- 
mans is getting very forward, sir," said one 
of our men to me. 

It was, of course, an act of revenge for 



128 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

what had happened just about a week pre- 
viously, when we saw a German observation 
ballooh drifting across our lines. There 
was great excitement, for the salient was 
long and narrow, and he might get into the 
enemy's sphere and drop into safety. All 
at once, like vultures swooping out of space 
above a battlefield, distant specks appeared, 
which grew, as they sped forward from the 
far heavens, into aeroplanes, and one of 
them dashed at the drifting balloon and rid- 
dled it. The observer had got himself en- 
tangled by his arm and leg in the cordage, 
but he got down safely, and was captured. 
The cheering over this event had a most re- 
markable effect. Close at hand it rang like 
a trumpet-call, and then you heard it all 
around, till at last, far off, it seemed as faint 
as a dying echo. A whole countryside had 
joined in the jubilation. 

The relationships between battalions of 
the same regiment sometimes evoke tenderly 
touching episodes. For instance, as we 
drew near the lines, after a long march, the 
guns flashing welcome, we saw a host of 
kilted fellows running through a field to- 
wards the muddy road, where they lined up 
on either side to wait our coming. It was 



OFFICERS AND MEN 129 

one of our battalions, which had just come 
out of a very stubborn fight, with victory. 
Somehow it did bring the lump to one's 
throat as we walked through those welcom- 
ing lines of brave fellows, our brothers of 
the tartan, with many a kent face amongst 
them. The Chaplain, from Aberdeen, fell 
in beside me, and we had a long chat to- 
gether as we walked. Their pipers took the 
place at our head, and played us along the 
road for Auld Langsyne. It must be very 
difficult for "frem'd folk" to understand the 
Scottish heart away from home. "You 
Scots are funny," said a man to me. "It 
would not matter much to me, an English- 
man, who was in camp. But if there's a 
Scotsman anywhere, you fellows are beside 
him, having a crack, in no time." "John 
Tamson's bairns" do not forget easily the 
things that make home homely, no matter 
what waters have flowed and ebbed, since 
last they saw the old land. And it gives a 
fine touch to life everywhere. Long may it 
continue. 

The farmhouse billets in France, in a 
march, are very varied. In most of them 
we slept on a brick floor, not uncomfortably, 
although one felt that he had discovered 



130 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the soft brick only too soon before revally. 
Every one of them had its midden right up 
to the door, just as in our Scottish farm- 
houses till the early part of the nineteenth 
century. In one place the farmhouse was 
an old family chateau, and the room we slept 
in had a beautiful scalloped ceiling. What 
had been a balcony or verandah ran along 
in front of the door, but the balustrade was 
long since gone. And a great sappy manure 
heap steamed where the lawn had been in 
ancient days. Where lords and ladies had 
walked and talked, the pigs now wallowed 
and grunted. One had to be careful in the 
dark, as the projecting steps left only a very 
narrow space between them and the savoury 
slough. We heard somebody leave the 
kitchen, talking, evidently to a visitor, and 
then there was a loud shout, followed by 
some military idiomatic reflections on things 
in general, and French middens in particu- 
lar. Then my servant entered for instruc- 
tions. One needed smelling salts for the in- 
terview. "Where have you been?" I asked. 
"In the midden, sir," said he; "but I man- 
aged to keep the other fellow undermost, and 
got off best." I was sorry for the billet 
companions of that other fellow that night. 



OFFICERS AND MEN 131 

Be brave, you folks at home, for the next 
few months. For there is to be a growing 
demand upon you for patience, prayerful- 
ness, perseverance, and strength of heart, 
such as you have never been asked for, to 
uphold those who are facing all things for 
your sake. 



BULLET AND SHELL 

She^i^ls are bad; trench mortars are 
worse; "whiz bangs" are most upsetting; 
but the sniper's bullet is the instrument of 
the Evil One. I have had four at me, so 
that I know what it feels like. You are 
awed by the others, but when a sniper's bul- 
let goes past you like a dragon-fly, you feel 
angry for a minute or two, and inclined to 
write to the Chief -Constable. Somehow, it 
does not feel fair. It takes you at a disad- 
vantage, and it seems to be at the moment a 
rudely personal attention. A shell on the 
other hand is not personal, unless you are 
in its way. The first time I got it was when 
coming down a short exposed road in the 
dark. It was a road where nobody had a 
right to go, but there was a notice forbidding 
traffic, and it was a short-cut, two convincing 
arguments for its use always. Perhaps it 
was hardly right to think of it as dark, for 
the star shells were bursting away behind us 

132 



BULLET AND SHELL 133 

occasionally, flooding everything with a 
gleaming kind of moonlight. You feel then 
as though you were fourteen feet high — a 
Goliath of Gath in a world of pygmies. Sud- 
denly a bullet whipped past, and with a 
"putt" went into the bank by the roadside. 
You felt yourself very much in the way of 
something, and almost said ''Beg pardon." 
The sergeant who was with me exclaimed, 
"Weel— if that's no' impudent." The next 
time, I was walking down a long gap — that 
is, a portion of the trench which is not 
manned by soldiers, but is protected by ar- 
tillery. I suppose it is usually enfiladable 
by the enemy. It was a lovely afternoon, 
and I was due for furlough in a couple of 
days. I felt quite safe. All at once I heard 
a bullet ring out, like a shilling, against a 
broken brick wall by the side of the trench. 
"Somebody out in the open, surely, playing 
the fool," thought I. "Ping" rang the bul- 
let once more. "Hello," said I to myself, 
"they're after somebody." But when the 
third ''ping" sounded, it occurred to me, 
"By George — they're after me!" So I 
stopped, stooped down, and waited. And 
the grim stillness sank over everything again 
with a kind of creepy awe. 



134. THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

We set off from this district on a long 
march, spread over a fortnight or so. So 
cold by this time were the early mornings 
that we sometimes held our jaws with our 
hands to keep our teeth from rattling to- 
gether. It was really too cold to ride, and 
walking with the men was much more en- 
joyable, though the roads were hard. The 
first day our fellows felt it somewhat se- 
verely. After having been in the trenches 
their feet were soft, and the heavy load 
which the soldier has to carry galled their 
shoulders. We marched through territory 
untouched by the blighting shadow of the 
times; and it was strange to see how the 
villages woke up as we passed, and to think 
how the little children would remember this 
greatest world war in history, most of all, 
by our passing. Some portions of the coun- 
try through which we marched were steep, 
hilly, rolling land. The roads meant climb- 
ing, and sometimes the transport would 
stick, and the panting horses and mules had 
to be helped by the cooks and servants push- 
ing behind the waggons. We were fre- 
quently reminded of the homeland — parts 
of Aberdeenshire about the Howe of Fyvie 
and around Turriff, It was extremely im- 



BULLET AND SHELL 136 

pressive to reach the summit of a road and 
look forward over the heads of a whole regi- 
ment descending the slope, seeing it sur- 
mount the hill in front of you; and, still 
farther on, the long living line of khaki mov- 
ing over the next ridge out of the hollow 
ahead, while behind you the same far- 
stretching mass was moving; and the breeze 
bore back to you snatches of the bagpipe 
march of the brave. A whole division with 
transport on trek is one of the most impos- 
ing and suggestive things the eye can look 
upon. 

I marched behind a different company 
every day, and tried to keep the fellows 
cheery. The son of Rob Donn, the Gaelic 
poet, used to sing his father's songs to the 
men of his regiment in the Peninsula, just 
as the lame schoolmaster Tyrtaeus gave the 
hearts of the Spartans an uplift in the far- 
back day in Greece. And song has still 
the same power. It is a thing that armies 
should cultivate for campaigning, for the 
march, and for the camp. If there is any- 
thing a soldier is thankful for it is the re- 
sponse to his prayer, "Chuck us a cheer." 
One day I got our fellows to sing The Bar- 
rin' o' Oor Door, and Lintin Lowrin. It 



136 THE HEART, OF A SOLDIER 

lifted the weary feet with a lighter spring 
along the heavy roads. And then silence 
sank on them. The burden was bowing 
them down. Some of them began to walk 
unsteadily, yet resolutely kept going, with 
head stooping forward and back bent. It 
is terrible to see a soldier all at once limp 
sorely, and you know that the blister on 
his heel has broken, and that he will be a 
lame man to-morrow. We were on the last 
lap that day, and going down a steep street, 
at the foot of which was a French hospital. 
The French soldiers, doctors, and nurses 
came out to the gate when they heard the 
skirl of the pipes. So I said to the men in 
front of me, "Buck up, you chaps. Our 
corps is second to none. Show how the men 
of the North can march." And the weary 
shoulders were straightened at once, and 
the tired feet took a wondrous spring into 
their limping, and the men went past the 
spectators as though at a review. But when 
the necessity was over, the effort relaxed, 
and we went forward to the finish like a 
band of beaten men. 

And now we passed on into the world of 
mud and pitiless rain and raw wet chill. 
The roads were over ankle-deep. The bil- 



•BULLET AND SHELL 137 

lets were damp and cold. Fog and rain pene- 
trated everywhere. We lay on the floor of 
a wretched hut one night, and as I turned 
round I struck a rat which was sleeping 
under my side. It ran away through the 
doorless shed with a step as heavy as a ter- 
rier. 

Always, always, day and night, there the 
guns go. You awake out of a dream that 
somebody has left a swinging door slam- 
ming somewhere in a draught; and then it 
dawns upon you what is banging. And 
always, always, night and day through the 
muddy ways go the scrunching feet of long 
lines of marching men for the trenches, 
through the dripping rain. There are no 
grinning apes amongst them yonder for a 
photographic pose. Life is very serious 
when you are drenched to the bone, and your 
boots are sodden, and your shoulders red 
with the sagging straps of your equipment. 
You have more to think of than to grin then. 

I got my own share of it on the evening 
of the first Sunday. My friend, with whom 
I had been previously, under similar experi- 
ences, went up with me. We turned off the 
muddy road, on to the "duckboards," 
or sparred gangway leading over the 



138 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

muddy shell-torn ground toward the ruined 
trenches. Right over the sky-line came 
about sixty straggling men. A German 
aeroplane hovered above them, and then 
dropped some smoke signals, and a blast of 
shell-fire swept across the ground, the men 
scuttering off like wild fowl into holes for 
shelter. We waited for a little and then 
made a bolt through it, leaving it thankfully 
behind. But when we reached the end of 
the boards, with still about thirty yards to 
go, I stepped right up to the waist into solid 
mud which gripped me like a cork in a bot- 
tle. The more I tried to get out the deeper 
I went in. My friend ran back, but could 
not pull me out. In a water hole near by 
were three or four men, and they waded 
across at great risk. With their help I got 
free. I sent on word with my friend that 
I was coming, and sat down on a mud-heap 
to rest a little, while the fellows went back 
to the hole. But just then the shells swept 
round and came over us in very swift suc- 
cession, falling everywhere with a plump 
into the mud, which sent up dirt and stones. 
Next moment, with a roar they burst, fling- 
ing into the air fragments of iron with a 
red-hot core in the centre of them. Th^ 



BULLET AND SHELL 139 

gunners were searching that corner very 
thoroughly, for they must have had a very 
good idea of where Headquarters' dug-out 
was. And the shells swept in semicircles 
for about forty minutes, ever nearer, till I 
felt sure the next was for me. All the time 
these poor fellows in the water were duck- 
ing, and clinging to the side of the broken 
trench, till at last the shells went off farther 
afield, and troubled us no more. 

There is a kind of fascination in an ex- 
perience like that, somewhat like what Liv- 
ingstone felt when underneath the lion's 
paw. You wait for the smash, saying, 
"Very well. Let it come. I cannot help it." 
And at the same time you cannot escape see- 
ing a humorous episode even in the midst of 
it. While the shells were passing away from 
us a voice kept calling for Corporal Some- 
body or other. And the men shouted the 
name along. But there was one oldish man 
with a look of one of Bairnsfather's folk on 
his face, clinging to a post in the muddy 
wall of the hole he stood in. A man near 
him said, ''Can't you shout? Don't you 
'ear?" And with a snarl he replied, "I'm 
fed-up shoutin'. And I'm fed-up 'earin'. So 
there," 



140 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

I have had one or two nasty moments in 
my life, but I think that was as nasty as 
any. And there can be no chill worse than 
the chill of that dripping mud soaking to 
your heart in a ruined hillside somewhere in 
France. It is strange what passes through 
your thought then. Of. course, every kind 
of serious and grave remembrances, and 
prayer. Yet also I recall how it struck me 
as a good thing that I had paid my bills on 
my last leave home ! 

I was not present when the boys came 
out after enduring that kind of thing for 
three or four days. It was in the dark they 
came, and many of them stuck as I stuck, 
and had to be dug out, while some took off 
their kilts and stepped out in their shirts. 
A doctor told me what a weird spectacle 
they made. As shells fell to right or left, or 
behind them, they bowed forward or side- 
ways to escape them. He said it reminded 
him, as flash after flash illumined them, of 
nothing so much as a host of Mohamme- 
dans at prayer in a mosque. It must have 
been like a scene in Dante's Inferno. It was 
indeed like a bit of the hinterland of hell. 
There is not, and I pray there never may 
again be, any place like that. 



BULLET AND SHELL 141 

It has made the men who have only seen 
it so, disbelieve in the legend of "sunny 
France." I often, just for fun, asked fel- 
lows whether it would not be fine, after the 
war, to fetch our friends across and take 
them for a run through France on a holiday 
tour. But they would always hold up their 
hands and cry, "No, no. I'll never set foot 
on France again if once I get out of it. I'd 
rather tramp to Jericho for change of air." 
I remember sitting outside a cafe in a small 
town with a young officer, on whose breast 
was the ribbon of the Victoria Cross. He 
was one of the "Die Hards," and the word 
"Albuera" on his cap badge reminded us of 
that regiment's deathless glory. It was a 
very sweet, quiet evening, and our hearts 
were away beyond the tall trees, thinking 
long thoughts. And he said, "I wish we 
could have more of this sweet quiet. I hate 
the thought of those unsleeping guns when 
I am here. Do you know — if I ever get back 
home to England I'll never go to an open- 
air picnic — I'll never drink tea on the lawn 
— I'll never go out in the rain — I'll never 
sleep in anything but the snuggest of feather 
beds. And certainly I'll never taste stew 
again, if I can help it, till I die. Mud, the 



14.^ THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

dug-outs, the trench cookery, and the rain 
have made me loathe the very thought of all 
these things." They also make home more 
precious. As one said, "I was quite glad 
coming back from leave, till I saw those 
ships passing us homeward bound. They 
turned my heart with them over the water." 
One evening, leaning against the wall of 
a trench, a Scottish officer said to me, "I 
can't help thinking what it's like at home, 
when I look at that rising moon above the 
misty river. The harvest is gathered in, 
and the last carts are just coming up the 
loan, between the hedges. I can hear the 
men speaking, and the girls and women 
laughing together. Why, I can smell my 
own tobacco, as I smoke at the door, look- 
ing out into the gloaming. Man, war is 
surely a daft-like thing. Just to think that 
it brings you and me, respectable men, who 
have never done harm to anybody, into this 
rat-run, and that there are two or three re- 
spectable enough men from near Berlin or 
somewhere in Germany, over yonder, in the 
moonlight, that never looked on our faces, 
and yet they'd go happy to their beds this 
night if they could put a bullet in the brain 
of either of us." 



BULLET AND SHELL 143 

We have a very miscellaneous set of fel- 
lows — men from the lumber lands, men 
from the tropics, men from the far-ofif 
northern wastes, men who have exchanged 
college rostrum and divinity school for the 
mud and the gun-pit. And their old inter- 
ests colour their present spheres wonder- 
fully. Many a chat I have had with one 
who, full of truest poetic sympathy, carried 
his well-thumbed Keats in his pocket and 
the spirit of it in his heart. And sometimes, 
on unexpected topics, a controversy would 
spring up suddenly, like a blast down a Scot- 
tish glen. One day, after a hot time, in a 
tight corner, two officers got into the midst 
of an argument on a peculiarly Scottish 
theme. One was an enthusiast, all aflame; 
the other a bilious, grim-visaged antagonist 
of the national poet's fame. *'Humph!" he 
snorted, "Burns? Who could stand him? 
A man without the slightest element of ordi- 
nary morality." But the other cried aloud, 
breaking into his native Doric, "Hoot, man, 
ye dinna test literature by cauld morality. 
Gin ye did, whaur's your Psalms o' Dauvid? 
Weel I wite, Bathsheba would set them tap- 
salteerie in twa minutes. Gin literature's 
only to be read and valued if written by the 



144 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

absolutely perfect, your 'Golden Treasury* 
would be a very sma' book." 

And yet the Scot is never without a very 
powerful sense of the fitness of things. I 
had a servant who could be merry as a lark, 
whistling while he worked, but he appre- 
ciated the gravity of his position as a Padre's 
servant, for on Sundays it was always the 
most solemn Psalm tunes that he whistled. 
On other days he had a kind of ritual, al- 
ways beginning the preparation of break- 
fast by alternately singing and whistling the 
hymn, "Now the day is over." 

Verily, the interest of our multicoloured 
army is continuously inexhaustible. 



THE LARK IN THE SKY 

In the mire of the Valley of Shadow, 

The shadow of pain, 
We stood in the wearisome trenches, 
The terrible trenches, 

In battle's red rain. 

The heavens were watchful above us; 

Within us was gloom, 
For the rifles rasped hideous laughter, 
Hell's horrible laughter, 

The laughter of doom. 

But sudden our hearts leapt within us. 

And woke with a cry ; 
For a marvel dropt down from the cloudland, 
Like a star from the cloudland — 

'Twas a lark in the sky. 

Our souls sought the hills and the meadows 

Afar o'er the foam ; 
As through mist we beheld the long ridges, 
The green and grey ridges. 

The dear fields of home. 

And we babbled old words in our longing. 

And our lips tried to pray — 
"O God, bring us safe to the homeland. 
To the hearts in the homeland 

We love far away." 
145 



146 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

And we saw, as in dream, the dear faces, 

As in moments gone by; 
Then we turned us again to our vigil, 
Made strong for our vigil 

By that lark in the sky ! 

L. McL. W. 



XI 
LINKS WITH HOME 

Though we were not without our times 
of yearning, being of course very humanly 
Scottish, yet there were some things that up- 
lifted us, in the land of war, and gave us 
strength to be patient and hopeful, linking 
us with home. One of these was the meet- 
ing of boys we knew, on their way off to 
"somewhere in France. '^ 

One day early in the war I heard of the 
presence of some kilted lads up in one of 
the camps, new arrivals, whose advent had 
missed our notice, and who were going off 
next day. So I motored up, and made for 
the Y.M.C.A. hut. There are over seven 
hundred lads away from my own church, so 
I was not astonished that the first man I 
ran against at the doorway was one of my 
own Bible Class at home. Inside, there 
were more of them, from the Choir, the 
Bible Class, the Guild, and the Parish, all 
looking hardy and fit, glowing in the very 
147 



148 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

best manliness. We might have been in the 
King's Park at Edinburgh, instead of in a 
camp in France, resting for a night, ere de- 
parture for the fighting Hne. We had a 
Scottish ^'Singsong" that time, the Welsh, 
English, and Irish present standing aside 
for their Scottish brethren. Next morning 
at six o'clock I was on my way to the camp, 
and marched down behind the pipes, along 
to the station, and saw them off. My heart 
went with them, but I had to go away back 
and comfort and strengthen some of the 
many pouring in continually to take their 
places in the line of battle also. 

Another episode that linked me on to 
home came into my experience, when one 
morning early I heard the bagpipes in the 
great boulevard off the street in which I was 
living. How much that means to the High- 
land heart! In a flash I saw the gleam of 
Hebridean seas, and the peaks of Skye 
dreaming in the starlight. I rushed to the 
window, but the music stopped. It was the 
march of the Camerons the pipers had been 
playing. In a few minutes, however, on 
they came again, the brave lads of the tar- 
tan. So I leaned out with my pipes and 
played the march of the Camerons to them 



LINKS WITH HOME 149 

till the last man went by. How they cheered, 
and waved their bonnets as they went, glad 
to be welcomed in a strange land by the 
strains they knew. Later, that day, at the 
Camp, an Inverness Captain whom I knew 
said, "The French are very decent. Do you 
know, when we came in this morning, our 
pipers stopped, and what do you think? 
Out stepped a little black Frenchman in his 
pyjamas onto the balcony of his window, and 
the beggar played us our march on the bag- 
pipes till the last man went by. Wasn't it 
decent of him?" 

Then, again, came the Gordons, a whole 
big battalion of them, men to be proud of, 
broad-bosomed men, clear-eyed, lithe and 
large of limb. It was a joy to talk to them. 
There was a University Company amongst 
them, and one man had, folded up in his 
sporran, a copy of Delitzsch's edition of the 
Psalms in Hebrew, to read in the train and 
the trenches! That was a typically Scot- 
tish touch. You cannot get away, even to- 
day, from John Knox's dream of a school 
in every Scottish parish. 

Another very striking link was, when 
one day, after a short service in a shed, with 
an English regiment going to the Front, I 



150 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

turned and found one of my own elders of 
St. Stephen's, Edinburgh, standing by my 
side. We waited, and watched the men 
marching out. It was a very moving 
thought that these were ready to give what 
was dearest to them for our sakes. I wish 
the people at home could see how bravely 
and unblenchingly their lads move on to the 
superlative sacrifice. Will they ever be 
forgotten? What can ever repay them for 
what they suffer and achieve? 

But there are other things also worth the 
telling. I went, not long since, to a grey 
camp on the slope of a hill, miry, cold, and 
cheerless. A keen wind piercingly filled 
each nook and cranny with invincible and 
unavoidable discomfort. The men, mud- 
covered, and blue with cold, their shoulders 
hunched up in the endeavour to find warmth 
under their khaki overcoats, were moving 
about aimlessly. The sentry, stamping his 
feet, was yearning for the hour of relief 
that seemed scarcely even to crawl towards 
him through the sodden clay. Not a spot 
was there into which the chill wind could 
not penetrate — not a corner around which 
it did not whirl to find the victim of its 
torment. 



LINKS WITH HOME 151 

The hut which I was visiting was as 
cheerless as could be. The air hung like 
a wet sheet, for coldness, in it. The boards 
were loose-fitting, the floor sagging on 
the mud — a poor hut, poorly built, and 
draughty. But that night, for an hour 
before the doors are thrown oi>en, there 
would be a long line outside, standing in the 
mire, shivering; ind then, with a rush, men 
from every country of the home-land would 
fill the place, till it steamed with perspiring 
humanity, and the atmosphere would be 
thick with the acrid smoke of Woodbine 
cigarettes. These are the soldier's stand- 
by, friend, and comforter. Give him a 
Woodbine in his teeth, and he will endure 
with scarce a groan the weary aching jolt of 
the ambulance train carrying him down 
from the front ; or when, as in the beginning 
sometimes without an anaesthetic, some ter- 
rible ordeal had to be faced immediately, he 
would grip the little "fag" tight, and, clutch- 
ing the edge of the table, face the very worst 
at the surgeon's hands. The Woodbine is 
his constant anodyne in war's sore agony. 
Surely, better stuff never grappled with pain 
and death anywhere ! 

Just as I was about to pass on to another 



152 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

place, a couple of men of the Black Watch 
came round the corner. They were tough 
little fellows of the Ghurka build, Highland 
in every line and limb. They touched their 
bonnets and said, 

''We're going off to the Front to-night, 
sir. And we thought we'd like to have the 
Sacrament before we go. Can you give it 
to us?" 

"How many?" I asked. 

"Oh, maybe sixteen," was the reply. 

"Well," I answered, "at six o'clock, in the 
shed next to this one, be present, with your 
friends." 

Off went the two, with a deepened light 
in their faces, while I prepared the place that 
was to be for some of them truly the room 
of the Last Supper. A tablecloth, borrowed 
from the mess, and a little wine from the 
same source, helped out our preparations. 
A notice on the door that the place was 
closed for ordinary use until the Communion 
Service was over, did not keep us free from 
interruption, for the room was the ordinary 
one for the soldiers' "Sing-song," and men 
would come and beat upon the doors, and 
clamour for admission, not reading notices, 
nor at first understanding. 



LINKS JVITH HOME 153 

There was a very special reason why I 
welcomed the experience. For, some years 
ago, in my first Parish, I realized how many, 
laid aside by sickness or old age, were unable 
to share in that service which is so precious 
to our Scottish folk. And I used to go on 
each Communion Sunday into the little 
homes in the lanes, or away across the 
moors, to some quiet bothy, carrying the 
sacred symbols of divine brotherhood, and 
so linking the lonely on to the wider com- 
munity, setting the solitary in families. 
And the Girls' Class of St. Stephen's had 
heard of it, and given me a chaste little set 
of Communion vessels for the purpose. 
And now these were to receive a very deep 
consecration. They were to be brought into 
living touch with the sacrifice of the bravest 
of our manhood, in this the greatest conflict 
of opposing ideals which the world has ever 
seen. 

The men began to gather, and sat down 
there as reverently as though the dim 
draughty hut were the chancel of some great 
cathedral, holy with the deepest memories 
of Christian generations. ''You might 
wait," whispered one. "Some of the 
Camerons and Seaforths may be able to 



154 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

come." So we waited — a hushed and 
solemn band. Then quietly, some of them 
began to croon old psalm memories, and 
hymns, waiting. And, after a while, the 
others came, stepping softly into the place; 
and with them comrades who explained that, 
though they were of a different country and 
a different church belief, they yet desired 
to share in the act of worship preparatory to 
celebration. At length about one hundred 
and twenty men were there, and we began. 
It was the Twenty-third Psalm, the Psalm 
of God's shepherding, the comradeship of 
the Divine in the Valley of the Shadow, the 
faith and the hope of the brave. 

"Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, 

Yet will I fear none ill, 
For Thou art with me." 

What a power was in it — what a spell of 
wonder, of comforting and uplifting in this 
land of war! They sang it very tenderly, 
for it spoke to them of times when they had 
held their mothers' hands, and looked up in 
their faces, in the church at home, wonder- 
ing why tears were there, as the dear old 
hearts remembered. Some of them also — 
the tears were on their cheeks as they sang 



LINKS WITH HOME 155 

that old psalm, very precious in the home- 
land, very precious here; and it is a soul- 
shaking thing to see a strong man's tears. 
It was surely thus our fathers sang, in quiet 
places, and by foreign streams, when to be 
true to the faith committed to them meant 
outcasting, exile, and death. 

It means a big thing still, to-day, for our 
world, this heart-deep singing of our soldier 
men. I had never dreamed that I should 
see such depths of feeling for eternal things. 
Do not tell me this is Armageddon. It is 
not the end of things. It is Resurrection 
and Pentecost we are passing through. A 
harvest is being sown in France of which 
the reaping shall be world-wide. There 
will be angels at that ingathering. 

It only needed the simplest words to seal 
that Sacrament. And next morning, in the 
grey light, the men who had been touched 
by the thought of home and the dear ones 
there, and the big throbbing thought of con- 
secration, were marching off to grip the very 
hand of death, in sacrifice, like Christ's, for 
others. 

I shall never see such wonder of faith 
again. It is a consecrated memory — the 
gloomy hut, in the silent camp, the strong 



156 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

men bowed and weeping under the urgent 
influence of the spirit of God. 

Only a night or two later, we had another 
link with higher things. It was in a tent, 
a big marquee, where the Y.M.C.A. was 
busy selling tea and coffee as we entered. 

"We are going off to-morrow," said a fine 
lad from Cheshire. "Give us Communion, 
that we may remember when we go, that 
high ideals call us." 

It was a difficult thing, just for a moment, 
to decide whether it should be held in that 
tent where men were noisily eating and 
drinking at the counter, or in some quiet 
place apart. Instinctively I said, "Yes. 
Here." So a rude communion-table was 
made, of boxes heaped together, as our 
fathers set up altar stones in the 
moors of old. We laid upon that table 
covered with a white linen cloth, the little 
chalice of silver, with the flagon of red wine, 
and the bread upon its platter, expecting 
eight men to partake. But the tent filled and 
hushed, and filled to overflowing; and, even 
outside, men stood and peered in through 
the seams. Men raised their drooping 
heads and stretched out their hands for the 
sacred symbols. 



LINKS WITH HOME 157 

Away up in the trenches, and about the 
region of La Bassee, red blood, as red as 
Christ's, was enriching the soil of France; 
and the hearts that were beating here might 
soon be still, in the long graves yonder. A 
breath of mystery seemed to sway them in 
that tent; and still that quiet urgency for 
more came up, until over three hundred 
men, whose faces to-morrow would be set 
towards the battle, had partaken of the 
Sacrament of Sacrifice that linked us to God 
and our homes across the sea. 

I cannot forget the little orderly who 
helped me. He was hardly more than a 
boy, but he was going off with the others, 
where death would run after him, and 
death's chances jostle him; and the thought 
lifted him suddenly into big manhood with 
the rest. 

*'Will you give it to me, sir, too?" he 
asked. And I gave him the bread, but in 
the storm of my feelings I for a moment 
forgot to give him the wine when the cup 
came back at last. Suddenly, as the men 
were singing, I remembered, and turning 
round held it out to him. I see him yet, 
drawing himself up to attention. He put 
his hand to his cap, as he would honour his 



158 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

earthly king, and saluted ere he took the 
symbol of the blood of the King of Love. 
These are things of eternal moment, unfor- 
gettable, in hours when life looked in at one 
window and saw death looking in at the 
other. 

Talk of our churches, our sects, our quar- 
relsome divisions! When men are face to 
face with the Eternal as we were out there, 
these things are as forgotten as the dust that 
blew last year, over the remotest sand-heap, 
into the Atlantic. Brotherhood in the 
divine uplifting of a great imperial call, and 
the love of a uniting Christship binds, as 
with a golden girdle, all our hopes, our 
faiths, and our fears, and links them to the 
Highest. 

These were children of sacrifice. The 
light of God was on their faces. To-day the 
dust of Belgium and France may be min- 
gling with their dust. But the grass will 
grow along the fields of conflict, and new 
hopes will spring in the ruined land of Bel- 
gium, where these lie sleeping. 



XII 
A RUINED WORLD 

It is impossible for the people at home to 
imagine the effect of war upon a country. 
What were beautiful rural retreats are now 
smashed and scarred out of recognition. A 
heap of dusty bricks marks where a village 
stood only recently; a broken wall is all 
that is left of a fine old church, which was 
encrusted by most sacred memories; a 
few stunted spars, splintered and blackened, 
shew where once was a forest of shimmer- 
ing greenery fit for the haunt of fairies. 
Where was a country road, down which 
were wont to come the laden carts in har- 
vest-time, is a miry track, torn by shell- 
holes, powdered and crunched into clinging 
mud-paste by the ambulances, the motor 
lorries, the transport limbers, and the long 
lines of jaded, soaked, earth-stained men 
continually on the move along it. 

All over the hillside, once beautiful in the 
sunshine, with waving corn, and woodlands 

159 



160 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

where the birds were singing, run the intri- 
cate mazes of forsaken trenches, broken 
and ploughed by the terrible artillery, 
gaping with the huge craters of exploded 
mines, wrinkled and scarred, seared and 
blighted as if with some horrid leprosy. 
It is strewn with graves. It is a land that 
bears the story of its torture in every 
feature. And the fruitful soil has been 
buried deep under stones and chalk refuse. 
It is an emaciated thing, like a blind beggar, 
the very bones projecting through its rot- 
ting skin. It is not like a bit of God's 
fair earth at all, but rather some kind of 
underworld, away from hope and laughter. 
And it was only so recently beautiful among 
the nations, and the pride of the people 
whom it bore. 

All over those ruined fields battle upon 
battle has swung in passionate struggle 
to and fro. For the enemy had laid down, 
with consummate thought and masterly 
design, what he intended to be an absolutely 
impregnable frontier line of earth-fort, 
strong dug-out, and powerful trench. And 
you would understand, as he has been made 
to understand, as never before, the stuff of 
which our race is made, if you saw the kind 



A RUINED WORLD 161 

of place from whicK our boys drove out 
the stiffest and most stubborn foe we ever 
had to face. 

The dug-outs which have been left un- 
damaged ought to be preserved for all the 
world to see, as monuments alike of deter- 
mined and purposeful industry, and of 
invincible courage and sacrifice. Some of 
them are two and three storeys in depth. 
You go down stairs that are wood-lined 
all the way with great strong beams; you 
can go along from passage to passage, 
looking into rooms comfortable, dry, and 
ventilated, furnished with many a titbit 
shifted from the homes which the guns 
have now blown flat — big, fine French 
beds, cosy arm-chairs, gilt-framed mirrors 
that once were in drawing-rooms, sumptu- 
ous rugs, warm curtains, stoves, and electric 
light. The men who occupied these never 
expected to be moved. Deep down there 
they could sit secure from bomb and shell, 
the explosions of which sounded far away. 
There, in safety from our unspeakably 
terrible bombardments, the Germans 
crowded together and lay low, and then, 
rushing up, brought their machine-guns to 
bear on our advancing lines. But yet. 



162 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

despite it all, the lads from our firesides 
at home and oversea stormed the stern 
citadels, snatched the strong shelters from 
the grip of the enemy, and with bayonet 
and fist forced the dismayed and astonished 
Huns into death or surrender. They are 
the true monuments and mementoes of 
our army's devotion. The heart swells 
with a pride that has tears behind it, 
beholding the strength which was over- 
come, and remembering the sacrifice will- 
ingly given, in the strenuous hour of 
honour's call, by those of our flesh and 
blood. God grant we may be worthy of 
them in the days that are to be! 

The very human instinct which makes 
people write their names upon the Pyra- 
mids, and in holier places, leaves its trace 
in the dug-outs also. On the lintels and 
jambs, in indelible pencil, is written name 
upon name ; sometimes the legend, ''Gott mit 
uns" ', a stanza of Luther's hymn, "Bin' 
feste Burg ist unser Gotf; or a verse or 
two of some old folk-ballad. At the door 
of one of these strongholds, on the ridge 
of a slope overlooking a once beautiful 
valley, I found a verse of warmest senti- 
ment, inspired by the thought of a girl far 



A RUINED WORLD 163 

away, and by the vision of the red, round, 
moon in the hazy sky. Some Saxon 
lover's heart was for a while uplifted from 
the grim environment of war by the magic 
of remembrance, while the vast solemnity 
of moonlight flooded that place of death 
and doom and dire destruction. On at 
least one of the dug-outs a desire for strict 
privacy had prompted the occupants to 
inscribe upon the lintel the notice, "Durch- 
gang verhoten" ("No admission"). They 
forgot to put up "except on business," so 
our brave Tommies went right in without 
knocking and took possession. 

Some of the mine-craters are awe-in- 
spiring, huge and monstrous evidences of 
the reality of war, scarified traces of 
terrible sacrifice. I saw one which must 
be about fifty yards in diameter and 
nearly fifty feet deep. The chalk soil and 
gravel glistened in the sun. And it re- 
minded me of nothing so much as the photo- 
graphs of mountains in the moon which 
were in our manuals of astronomy at 
college. Right down at the centre of it 
was a little cross; and here and there 
along the sloping sides the marks of brave 
dust's sleeping-places, with remains of 



164 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

German uniforms scattered about. Not 
far from the edge of it stands a big, simple 
white cross inscribed, "Here lie buried the 

gallant men of the th Division, killed 

1st July 1916." Then follow the names of 
some well-known regiments, including one 
of our own local battalions. Everywhere in 
No Man's Land, the scene of conflict on that 
memorable day, where, among the rough 
grasses and thorns, the broken and rusting 
barbed wire caught your foot, are to be 
found memorials of the fallen. There is a 
touch of extreme pathos in some of the dis- 
tinctive marks, as, for example, the weather- 
worn broad bonnet of a Scottish regiment, 
the ordinary regulation cap, a trench helmet 
or two with the hole made by the bullet 
which was the sudden messenger of death. 
These, placed on the top of the little, rude 
wooden crosses, shewed where had been 
found unknown and unidentified dead. 
The piteousness of the lost, who fell without 
a message, strikes you there. 

I remember another mine-crater, in an- 
other place, where the graves were for the 
most part those of French soldiers who had 
been laid to rest by the hands of those who 
knew them not. There was a slab about 



A RUINED WORLD 16Q 

the centre to the memory of "Plusieiirs 
inconniis soldats frangais morts an champ 
d'honneur." To one cross was affixed a 
letter from the little daughter of the man 
whose stricken body slept below. It had 
been found in his pocket, stained and 
creased, but kept as a tender souvenir of 
home. It was addressed, "A mon pere a la 
guerre." It spoke to us, beholding it, of 
a young heart, somewhere, with the first 
touch of the mystery of death and the 
enigma of the empty chair cold upon it. 

The stillness of those places, so lately 
swept by the overwhelming thunders of 
doom, was beyond description. And 
Nature's exquisite poesy had intervened; 
for, along the forsaken trenches, and near 
the graves, the drowsy scarlet poppy was 
waving in the silent garden of sleep. And 
sometimes it was as though war's destruc- 
tive hand, rending the clay, had loosened 
the slumbering seeds of countless wild 
flowers, and given them their chance to hide 
the scars which the wrath of man had made 
on the face of the world. 

We sat on a ridge there for a little while, 
and looked down on the battered village 
below, and the wood beyond, where such 



166 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

a dire struggle had so recently marked the 
dawn of a summer day; and the tragedy 
of it all came close in beside us, keeping us 
silent as those whose grave-mounds were 
scattered in the green plots near. Just in 
front of us was the grave of a German 
officer; the silver-grey moth which was 
creeping up his broken cross seemed to 
take a sudden meaning in that quiet place. 
And across the valley we could see the long 
line of men in khaki winding over the hill, 
horizonwards, through a ruined land. 

As one moves from place to place one 
cannot but ask what is to be the fate of 
those shattered places, where happy folks 
once dwelt together, and of which, save for 
some heaps of brick-dust and a few spars, 
scarce a vestige now remains? Will they 
be rebuilt? I fancy, however poor the 
ruins are to-day, sentiment will bring back 
the scattered people to the old sites, that 
still in their desolateness are dear to the 
memory of those whose homes were there. 
For a long time after the war there will be 
villages of huts, for I have heard a whisper 
that the wooden buildings in our encamp- 
ments may be purchased by the French 
Government for this very purpose. But 



A RUINED WORLD 167 

it is at present difficult to conceive a set of 
settled communities in these valleys and 
fields of death. And yet every day one 
has seen how the people cling to the land. 
Shells may fall with nerve-shaking insist- 
ency, but the peasant will go on with his 
ploughing or his harrowing, turning a deaf 
ear to the threat of war. And the industry 
of the French nation has in the past wrought 
wonders when the cloud of war has removed 
its threat from their country. 

Their thrift is historic. They are much 
given to hiding their hoard under the floor 
or in their gardens ere they flee. In one 
place in the Ancre region a man came with 
permission to search for his money where 
he had secreted it. He was led out to the 
place, where every trace of the village had 
been obliterated by countless shells, where 
shell-hole upon shell-hole made desolation 
of vineyard and garden. On a little narrow 
ridge between two great pits he found a 
stump which he thought was what was left 
of the bush that had been his landmark, 
and digging there he found his treasure. 
A few inches on either side and his lifelong 
savings would have been scattered beyond 
recovery. He almost fell upon the ground 



168 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

for gratitude over the issue of his search. 
It made one think of what it all must 
mean to countless others who are not so 
fortunate. 

Perhaps as terrible as crumbled ruins is 
the deserted village, where the houses still 
are standing, though at intervals along the 
street some have had their roofs blown in 
or the front walls shattered, and the church 
has been pierced by shells. I remember 
the first of these through which I rode in 
the dark. The empty, windowless rooms 
sent back the beat of our horses' feet most 
eerily, and we hushed our voices to a 
whisper as we rode. A large convent 
loomed by the roadside, empty and dark. 
And one felt something like the shadow of 
some great despair behind those forsaken 
walls. By daylight it was just as eerie. 
And you saw what wreckage war had made. 
At one door, in the passage, a cradle had 
been left behind. The people had appar- 
ently been in flight when a shell had 
dropped in the street, and they had fled 
precipitately then for dear life. The church 
precincts and the convent garden had been 
thoroughly searched by artillery, shell-hole 
lying in almost immediate contact with 



A RUINED WORLD 169 

shell-hole. There was not a sign of life 
anywhere, except a stray cat or two which 
still lingered about the familiar places, and 
the chirp of the sparrows which thronged 
the bushes about the silent convent. In a 
corner of the garden there, a little gathering 
of plain white wooden crosses told where 
the tired ones were sleeping till the Great 
Awakening. In that place I have spoken 
of the Resurrection and the Life above the 
sleepers, in the sunshine and the rain. 

Almost as pathetic as the deserted village 
is the half- forsaken town, where, because 
the German guns drop their ''crumps" 
there daily, most of the population have 
shut their doors and fled. I was often in 
one such, where before the war probably 
almost twenty thousand people led a busily 
industrious life. In the thoroughfare which 
bears the French equivalent of ''Commercial 
Street" the grass was growing thick. 
Everywhere windows had been blown in, 
and high roofs broken like matchwood. 
The beautiful old square was silent, the 
green grass flourishing between the paving- 
stones, and scarcely a footfall disturbed its 
slumber. But one day my servant said, 
"Ride round this way, sir. There's some- 



170 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

thing here that touched my heart yester- 
day." So we turned into a side-street of 
working folks' houses. And there were 
bairns laughing in their games, forgetful of 
the ruin and desolation. John stopped 
his horse, and his voice was husky as he 
said, "There's something in the Scriptures 
about a thing like this; a promise that in 
ruined Jerusalem there shall be children 
playing in the streets again. I found this 
here yesterday, and it minded me o' that." 

As sad as anything is the old chateau in 
the pleasant, wood-environed meadow, like 
a lamed and wounded thing, with ancient 
names on the marble slabs in the vaults, 
and the gilding still on the drawing-room, 
though sorely tarnished by the rain and the 
fog that have had too free entry through 
the dilapidated ceiling. I was sitting in 
one like that, chatting with some doctors 
who had made it their headquarters, when 
suddenly three shells fell in the wood close 
by, and rocked the old place like a cradle. 
Somebody just said, "Hullo!" and then we 
went on with the conversation. On the 
floor of the drawing-room, quite near us, 
lay an ugly lump of iron which had come 
in the day previous, through a panel of 



A RUINED WORLD 171 

the drawing-room door, from a similar 
experience. 

You do not need to go up to the front- 
line trench for risky moments. The 
messages of Brother Fritz are delivered 
unpleasantly far back, and when least 
expected. I have heard them falling quite 
near us when we thought ourselves in a 
really secure billet. And one day, just 
across a field from where I stood, I saw one 
burst in a threadbare bit of wood, amongst 
some men who little looked for such a mis- 
sive. It was strange to see the sudden 
alarm, and how the poor fellows ran hither 
and thither seeking cover, some of them 
vainly, from their horrid visitor. 

All these places had names of their own 
before the war. They will, of course, have 
them still when war is over. They will 
keep the broken remembrance of them 
somehow, as a maimed brain keeps the 
memory of its past. But the British 
soldier has baptized them all by odd terms, 
making wild, grabbing attempts after the 
real thing, with the oddest and yet fre- 
quently most eloquent meanings as result. 
When one reflects on his experience in 
certain neighbourhoods, could anything 



m THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

be more appropriate than Armytears, or 
Devil's Wood, or Business, or Eatables, for 
certain well-known spheres of strenu- 
ous and painful activity? The trenches get 
their own names too. You find your way 
by Paternoster Row out to Ailsa Craig, 
so called from its remoteness and isolation; 
and you must be careful going through 
Na Poo Avenue, for it can be enfiladed by 
the enemy snipers, and many a brave fellow 
has been "na poo" there. It is the soldier's 
familiar equivalent for the French phrase 
which expresses the fact that anything 
has come to an end, that there is no more of 
it; but it is in reality a patois synonym 
for the French classical sentence. And 
sometimes you stumble upon more familiar 
ground. One day I had to stoop in going 
underneath an overhead obstacle in a 
trench ; and as I rose too suddenly I received 
a very sharp blow, which might have 
stunned me but for my good steel helmet's 
protection. As I looked up I found that 
I had just passed through Gibb's Entry. 
Surely it was an Edinburgh lad from 
Nicolson Street, where that familiar alley 
is to be found, that wrote the name there. 
In this ruined land the presence of winter 



A RUINED WORLD 173 

gives us all serious thought. It is a horrible 
thing to contemplate. A few days' rain, 
and you will in some places have three feet 
of muddy, chill water to waddle through. 
And farther on, where the great guns 
have battered the world into smashed pulp 
of mire, you may go up to the waist, and 
indeed plunge into death itself, in loath- 
some mud. Nothing can be drearier, more 
dismal, or more grim than the winter land- 
scape there — black slime of clammy clay, 
with water-filled shell-holes, stretching to a 
dull grey horizon-line. The camp where the 
transport lies is a quag, where mud-covered 
horses and men shiver by day and night. 
And the line is a series of deadly holes, 
where the faithful hold their posts in hide- 
ous discomfort, under an intermittent fire of 
shells which splash into the mire, flinging 
up first of all dirt and stones around them, 
and then, with a roaring burst, showers of 
missiles and fragments of iron, with the red 
fiery thing of hate in the heart of them. 
And that is the discipline through which our 
boys pass, without despondency, till the 
time for advance comes again, and we go 
forward once more along the path of inevi- 
table sacrifice to victory. 



XIII 
YPRES 

On my return from leave I was trans- 
ferred from the Gordons to the Black 
Watch. I got rather a start when an officef 
at the Base, on 28th February, gave me a 
movement order instructing me to leave for 
the front on the 2gth of that month. As 
this meant that I should have to wait in 
Boulogne till the year 1920, I got him to 
alter the date to the ist of March, and so I 
left the next day. 

What a joy the advent of Spring brings 
to us in this land of sorrow. It had been 
one long dreary winter-time of alternating 
discomforts, a world of universal mire. 

I remember a friend of mine being 
brought down from Beaumont-Hamel into 
a Field Ambulance when I was lying there. 
He was one of the finest types of Northern 
Englishmen that I have ever known, brave 
in the field and trench, bright on the march 
and in the camp. He was dripping with 
174 



YPRES 175 

mud from head to heel, and doubled up with 
excruciating rheumatism. A man on the 
adjacent stretcher asked him what it was 
like where he had come from, and he replied, 
"It is cold hell." That was our Celtic idea 
of the place of torment — Ifrinn fuar, a 
place of chill from which there can be no 
escape, of dripping mist and rain from 
which there is no shelter. Nothing could 
more aptly describe the heart of winter 
in the broken trench-holes from which our 
artillery had expelled the Germans, and 
which we had to occupy and hold, but out 
of which a constant stream of sick and 
crippled men passed down the line through 
our hospitals. 

The dug-outs in that district, after a 
forward driving movement, held the story 
in vivid lines of pain, as if in suspense. 
In one, of the usual kind, a man was sitting 
dead at the top of the stair, his head re- 
clining against the wall, his eyes closed as 
though sleeping, and five bayonet wounds 
in his breast. At the foot of the stair lay 
another, who had been flung down head- 
long. In the bed lay a British sergeant, 
shot through the abdomen, his pipe fallen 
aside, after his last smoke, just before he 



176 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

had died. Under the bed lay two German 
officers, dead, with their boots off. 

Not far off, up on the bleak and dismal 
slope were two great tanks, which had 
stuck in the mud, and around them lay 
the men, our own and the enemy, who would 
never fight again. 

One of our young officers missed his 
way in the dark, up there, and wandered 
off, lost. Afraid lest he should stumble 
into the German lines, the locality of which 
was meanwhile quite uncertain, he took 
shelter in a dug-out. But he could not 
stay there. It was full of German dead, 
some sprawling on the floor, some sitting 
up against the wall, or in the corners. He 
flashed his torch around his fellow-tenants 
once, and once only. ''Their eyes," said 
he, "were hauntingly blue. They stared at 
me as if questioning my intrusion. In the 
darkness, something stirred. I felt that 
they were going to leap at me," he said, "and 
I could quite understand one's reason waver- 
ing for a moment." So out he went again, 
to seek his way. But, hearing strange voices 
near, he hid in a shell-hole, with his revolver 
ready. The voices approached and passed. 
And then, tired out, he fell asleep. When 



YPRES 177 

he woke, chilled to the bone, he found that 
his revolver had dropped into the mud and 
disappeared. He had to get along, and keep 
moving. And then suddenly he heard two 
English Tommies grumbling somewhere 
ahead, loudly, about the quality of their 
bully beef. "I could have kissed them 1" he 
exclaimed. "It was heavenly to hear them 
cursing." And indeed there can be nothing 
sweeter to the ear in such circumstances 
than to hear an old camp grouser luridly 
describing his luck. You may be certain 
then that you have come across as staunch a 
bit of manhood as can be found in any army 
anywhere, and in his best form. 

The artillery activity down there was 
practically continuous. It woke you 
through the dark, like the frantic thunder 
of some mad tom-tom player, with the 
"Ha-ha-ha!" of the hellish laughter of 
the machine-guns for chorus. 

I remember seeing my new regiment 
land in France early in 191 5 as two bat- 
talions. Their broken ranks had been replen- 
ished and broken again and again till now 
they were combined as one battalion, though 
it needed a large draft from another regi- 
ment to make up even that. Amongst them 



178 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

were some men of my first parish in 
Aberdeenshire, so that there was a curiously- 
human Hnk with the Gordons still. 

We were up in the famous Salient of 
Ypres, where I had formerly been for a 
little while in 191 6, but it was only now 
that I got my first acquaintance with that 
town itself. It was on a Saturday after- 
noon, and at the entrance to the town I 
overtook a man of the Black Watch, who, 
recognizing the red heckle in the bonnet 
tucked in at my belt, became very friendly. 
He said he would lead me to the Barracks, 
where my people were. But it was soon 
quite apparent that he did not know the 
way, and that he was not of our battalion. 
First he led me to the Square, only to be 
turned back by the military policeman; 
for the Square is shelled daily, and nobody 
is allowed to pass through it. Only the 
policeman, another of the forgotten brave 
ones, stands there for the protection of 
others. My guide pointed to the frag- 
ments of the famous Cathedral, and he 
said, "That maun hae been a vera fine 
Catholic chaipel. I never saw sae mony 
braw chaipels onywhere. Of coorse they're 
a' chaipel folk in this country, but 



YPRES 179 

they maun be gey supersteeshous to hae sae 
mony kirks." After wandering about for 
a while he had to admit that he had led me 
astray. "But just you gang doon this 
close," said he, pointing along a ruined 
alley, "and speer at the first body you 
meet. They're bound to ken. Oh ay — 
the Berracks is a well-kent place!" pawkily 
covering up his own ignorance by his 
assurance of the intelligence of others. 

In a cellar, protected with sand-bags, I 
found the Y.M.C.A., and soon was at my 
destination. 

I never saw, and hope never to see again, 
another such town. Before the war it was 
a prosperous place of about twenty thou- 
sand people. Its Cathedral, as everybody 
knows, was one of the notable churches of 
the Low Countries, and the magnificent 
Hall of its Cloth Guild one of the famous 
glories of the Middle Ages. But one day 
in April 1915, while citizens and soldiers 
were walking about in the crowded Square, 
and the streets were full, a torrent of shell 
poured over the place, and in a few minutes 
the Square was a bloody shambles of 
dying men, women, and children, while 
crowds ran in screaming distraction, trying 



180 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

to escape from the horrible death that 
pursued them everywhere. Hundreds took 
refuge in the cellars, but the houses toppled 
in upon them and crushed them. There is 
not now a living creature there, except our 
soldiers. Desolation like the desolation of 
a town over which has swept the tornado of 
volcanic destruction is everywhere. The 
Cloth Hall is a heap of broken stone. The 
Cathedral lies like a shipwreck, with its bare 
ribs open to the weather. As you walk 
through the forsaken streets you hear the 
whistle and groan of a shell go overhead, 
and the crash falls just a house or two away 
from you in an adjacent lane. It is like a 
town blighted by a curse^a place of fear 
in the sunlight, and a haunt of ghosts and 
devils in the dark. It is a place that you 
hold your breath in, often. Your heart 
quickens as you enter it; and you breathe 
freely when you leave it. 

Next day I had to hold a service at a 
windmill, where a Casualty Clearing Station 
was established. And then I was to go 
back to Ypres for a service in the Barracks 
there. The old mill had been dismantled. 
The story was that it had belonged to the 
Maire of the village near by; but it had been 



YPRES 181 

observed that even when there was no wind 
blowing, the sails would move. And it was 
proved conclusively that those great arms, 
seen far and wide, were being used for sig- 
nalling to the enemy. That finished the 
Maire's interest in worldly affairs for ever, 
and the mill was fitted up for nobler uses. 
Immediately after my service I went 
through the street of shattered houses, past 
the Church, where only a fragment of the 
tower is standing, all a-topple, with the 
shell-broken grave-stones around it, on to 
the cross roads. And there before me lay 
the white-paved road to Ypres. 

There are trees still standing on either 
side of it, though many of them are split 
and broken. And the fields through 
which it runs bear countless traces of 
bombardment, water-filled shell-holes in- 
numerable telling of the attentions of the 
enemy. Not a soul was to be seen upon 
it. And everything was silent as the 
grave. It was like a road leading into 
another world. Horsemen and wheeled 
traffic, except for an occasional emer- 
gency waggon, or a general's car, are 
forbidden in daylight beyond those cross 
roads. 



182 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

I had not gone far along it when my 
attention was arrested by the quick sound 
of Lewis guns firing away up overhead. 
And I stood and saw two aeroplanes 
fighting for life against several others 
which pursued them, darting after them 
like hawks, whenever they tried to escape. 
And at length one of the two, disabled, 
dropped from cloudland swinging to and 
fro, till it fell like a stone. The 
other kept up a plucky fight, but it, too, at a 
great height, was riddled and fell also. 
The pilot fell out of it — a little speck like a 
fly. He seemed to pause for a moment 
and then dropped after his machine. 
Somehow I thought these were enemy 
planes as I could not see their markings, 
and I cheered where I stood. But shortly 
afterwards I met a man resting by the way- 
side, and he told me they were two of ours. 
I never afterwards cheered again till I was 
sure. 

A little farther on a couple of shells came 
screaming over, and fell in the field beside 
the road, disturbing some men who had 
evidently been in some dug-out shelter, 
for they squattered away like ducks, to 
another security, and I never saw them 



YPRES 183 

again. It makes you think very quickly 
for a little, asking yourself which way lies 
safety — on this side or the other; till you 
suddenly remember that the way of duty 
lies straight on, and you are probably as 
safe in the middle as anywhere else. 

My service was in a cellar in the Bar- 
racks, a dim dull chamber with an arched 
roof. The place was packed. Just as 
my service began, a big gun next door 
shook the place, and the flash lit up the room. 
I saw the gleam in the eyes of my congre- 
gation, and everybody irresistibly ducked, 
for it was as though a shell had landed 
beside us. It was a sight not easily for- 
gotten. 

Later on, in Ypres, as I came in 
to have a service on a pleasant Sunday 
morning, we had a very startling opening 
voluntary. A German shell struck a 
corner of the Barrack Square, killing one 
and severely wounding five of my con- 
gregation. It was a tense moment. But 
we went over to another corner. I told 
the men the service was for those who 
wished it, and a little band followed 
me. We read together the 91st Psalm, 
joined in prayer, and then I spoke a few 



184. THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

words on the lesson whicH is very specially 
the soldier's psalm, concentrating on the 
verse, "Thou shalt not be afraid for the 
terror by night, . . . nor for the destruc- 
tion that wasteth at noonday." Fortu- 
nately nothing more came over. 

I remember also a service on the canal 
bank at Ypres. The day v^as full of sweet 
beauty. I had had a long walk from an 
early service. But somehow Sunday morn- 
ing seems the favourite time for shelling. 
As we passed along, a gun just beside the 
road sent off a morning greeting to the 
Germans, and others followed suit. It was 
very remarkable to hear three or four shells 
sing their terrible song of death together in 
flight through the air side by side. 

On the canal bank a squad was being 
drilled in gas-helmet exercise, and they 
looked the most grotesquely fierce 
creatures, like things that had crept out of 
some goblin story, through deep waters, into 
the light of the sun. Away on the right was 
the end of Ypres, the grey mouldering ruins 
projecting like a broken bone. The men sat 
down on the bank, and we sang ''Oh, God of 
Bethel'* and had a short service together. 
Now and again an occasional shell fell near. 



YPRES 185 

and in between we could hear the cuckoo's 
call and the larks singing as though anything 
like war were very far away. 

I had to go back for another service, and 
it was most interesting to see how the 
Germans had been searching for our guns. 
Everywhere were shell-holes, and the won- 
der truly was how they had really missed 
the mark they sought. For, the day pre- 
vious, the crash of their artillery had been 
constant. And there was a curious accom- 
paniment to it. For an English regiment 
had been bragging a little about its football 
prowess, they having been invincible in over 
forty games. Now, in the Black Watch we 
had some notable footballers who took up 
the challenge. I question if there ever was 
a more hotly contested game than that 
played behind the line. All the while the 
shells were falling at intervals, not far off; 
and it was very funny to observe the on- 
lookers shouting "Goal!" or ''Foul!" or 
"Play the game!" and then giving a hasty 
glance over their shoulders to see where the 
last shell had dropped. The players them- 
selves were too eager to think of anything 
but the game, and the Black Watch broke 
the boasted record all to smash. The red 



186 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

heckle led again to victory. Of course, as 
everybody knows, it was given to the regi- 
ment as a badge of notable victory, when in 
1795 the men of Am Preiceadan dubh^ 
dragged back from the clutch of the enemy 
the guns which had been lost, and got given 
to them for all time, in commemoration of 
their valour, the scarlet plume of a notable 
dragoon regiment, through whose wavering 
these had been taken. Nothing keeps the 
men fit like a tussle on the football field, and 
it steadies and trains heart and eye for the 
sterner game that is waiting for its turn 
later on. 

» Gaelic = The Black Watch. 



XIV 
IN THE SALIENT 

Nothing could be more comforting to us 
than, when the German shells come over, 
to hear our guns take up the defensive, 
with a loud "Hands off!" And then a 
deadly dialogue ensues. 

It is wonderful to see how cleverly the 
sites of our guns are hid from aeroplane 
observation. You might frequently enough 
pass the quiet lonely ruined cottage by the 
wayside, whose shutters seemed to have 
half dropped from their hinges, but one 
day you see a canvas screen pulled slightly 
apart, and the muzzle of a big gun peers 
out of the shadows at you. Everything 
seems forsaken, till suddenly you see an 
officer busy at a telephone, whispering 
messages to some far-off station. I remem- 
ber a place where we had heavy guns that 
shook everybody and everything near, when 
they were fired ; and one day shell upon shell 
was spent trying to knock these out. We 

187 



188 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

had imitation gun shelters erected out in 
fields, and through the screen of painted 
tarpaulin and twigs a beam of wood pro- 
truded, for all the world like the muzzle of 
a gun. The German aircraft men had seen 
these, and many a pound of powder had been 
burned putting the dummies out of action. 

Alongside of such practical joke tactics, 
however, the bitterly grim reality was 
always claiming its place. One night I 
noticed a fine stalwart corporal of the guard 
walking to and fro. I could not help stand- 
ing still for a long time and watching him. 
A finer figure in a kilt I never saw. And 
I thought what a picture he would make at 
a camp fire, with the dark night all around. 
Two days later, in the trenches, he stood up 
straight, and the sniper's bullet caught him. 
It took our men hours to bring his body 
down the trench to the graveyard at the 
farm beyond the Lille Gate. I went thither 
from Ypres to bury him and another of 
our fellows, out by Shrapnel Corner. It 
and Hell-Fire Corner always live up to their 
names. There had been a hot time there 
the night before. I picked up an orderly 
at the Barracks at random, and he turned 
out to be the nephew of an elder of mine in 



IN THE SALIENT 189 

my Aberdeenshire parish, twenty years ago. 
The world is so small to-day. We did not 
linger at Shrapnel Corner, for the traces of 
the recent bombardment were only too fresh 
to recommend delay. Tree stumps had 
been split and shattered, and the road torn 
into holes. The trolly track up which we 
were to have gone on leaving the road had 
been broken ; so we waded through the mud 
beside it till we reached a sluggish stream 
that seemed uncertain which way to go. 
There we had to creep carefully up on to 
the trolly road, and bolting over, dropped 
instantly to the ground when we had crossed. 
And now the enemy began to shell the rail- 
way, which ran quite near; and the whistle 
and scream of missiles were a constant re- 
minder of the danger that is always at hand 
in that Salient. 

I had to wait for some hours at the grave- 
yard till the bodies arrived. And somehow 
the instinct to get in somewhere under cover 
of however crazy a shelter prevailed. I 
have seen us pull the blanket over our heads 
when the anti-aircraft shell-cases were com- 
ing down with a "whoo." In fact I believe 
that if one had an umbrella with him he 
would be tempted to put it up. The little 



190 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

broken shed into which I stepped had been 
only a kind of barn or byre. There was 
scarcely anything of it left, and it was open 
to the sky. But in there lay eight or nine 
dead men, under their blankets, waiting for 
the grave. One I remember was a fine and 
beautiful youth, with his eyes closed as if 
in gentle sleep; and still upon his cheeks 
was the pink glow, as though death had only 
a minute since frozen life's warm stream. 
I drew the blankets up over their faces, and 
left them. 

The Ypres Salient is an uncomfortable 
place. It is considered, with good reason, 
to be ''unhealthy." Every wind that blows 
may be said to blow from the enemy's direc- 
tion. And the notices always seem to stand 
at "Dangerous." The last night I was there 
we had a gas alarm. The camp was sleep- 
ing, so first of all we roused the men, and 
then, with our gas helmets on, stood wait- 
ing. The thought of the chance of being 
smothered by this dreadful invention of 
modern warfare was most unpleasant. It 
is the only thing that ever made my knees 
shake for a little. We heard the hooters 
go, and the gongs rattle, and then the roar- 
ing barrage. But the alarm passed, and the 



IN THE SALIENT 191 

horror uplifted, though it is not easily for- 
gotten. Odd accidents happen in the Salient. 
One day our canteen corporal was sitting 
at the counter, when a shell burst near the 
hut. He had his hand in his pocket, and 
when he pulled it out as a piece of shrapnel 
passed through, he left two of his fingers 
behind. The thing happened in a moment, 
and he felt first of all astonished, and then 
very thankful to have got off so cheaply. 

Sometimes you find the shelter you seek 
only adding inconvenience rather than ease 
to your lot. Near Ypres stands the Asylum. 
It was a Hospice of the Sacred Heart. The 
Hun was busy when I went in there one 
evening. It is a large place, with beautiful 
courtyards, and the remains of a fine clois- 
tered walk around. The bombardment had 
lifted a poor dead soldier out of his grave, 
and he had to be reinterred. I felt quite 
relieved when I got away from it. 

We were only once, during the three 
months, out of the Salient, being sent back 
for a long-promised rest, which was cur- 
tailed to two days, after which we were sent 
up the line again. When we were coming 
out we passed through little villages and 
clachans, some of them just clusters of 



192 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

wooden huts, some mere caravans side by- 
side. From the names above the doors — 
"New Ypres," "Vlamertinge," and the like 
— you could see that they were settlements 
of refugees out of the old terrible days, the 
broken remnants of a once happy population. 
Once, as we trudged along, we passed an 
English regiment resting by the wayside, 
and out of compliment to the Scots, a soldier 
was upstanding, playing the strathspey 
called Stirling Castle, on a violin, to us, as we 
marched. He got a hearty cheer all along 
the ranks. 

It was very delightful to get a real bed 
for these two days, in an attic above a 
baker's shop, in a little French village, ere 
we returned to the Belgian mud. The vil- 
lagers were much interested in the Scots- 
men. And it was fine to them to be 
awakened every morning at revally, with 
Hey, Johnnie Cope, are you waukin' yet? — 
to hear the pipes at meal-time playing the 
old injunction, O gie my love brose and but- 
ter, and then again at "Lights out" to hear 
the piper going through the narrow street 
with the ancient strains of Donald Gorm. 

Our kilts always struck the villagers as 
something strange and wild. I remember 



IN THE SALIENT 193 

in one quiet village on our way down to the 
Ancre, I was quartered for the night on a 
very quaint household. Their home was a 
large house beside the road. It had the ap- 
pearance of a long-decayed gentility, and it 
was occupied by two faded old ladies and a 
shadowy, very ancient man. They seemed 
to be unable to move from beside the stove, 
nursing the last remaining dregs of life in 
its scanty warmth. Two officers, mistak- 
ing their billet, came in and tried to set up 
occupation, but I turned them out, directing 
them to their own place. The spectres had 
risen to their feet in fear. And after the 
intruders had gone, they asked me, trem- 
blingly, whether we were Francs-tireurs. 
They seemed to think we were wild irregu- 
lars, with our mountain garb and our 
screaming bagpipes. 

Our march back to the Salient was 
through bitter wind and sleet; but I had 
found a tin whistle in the camp before we 
had gone out, and as I tramped with the 
doctor behind the last Company, I kept the 
lagging feet going, with Bonnie Dundee, 
Mrs. Macleod of Raasay, and many another 
old march of our Northern people. A Chap- 
lain has to forget his clerical collar and his 



194 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

Sam Browne belt, and to be lark and linnet, 
comforter and chum, if he is to be of real 
living use to the boys. 

One never can forget some of the nights 
up there. I recall the heavens, full of bril- 
liant stars; the new moon clear and beauti- 
ful, like a shallow skiff of beaten silver, with 
the shadow of the earth, like a sorrow, en- 
folded in its clasp. The foreground dark, 
except for shining pools in shell-holes, and 
the gleam of a winding stream that crawled 
through the camp. Far off, behind a ruined 
woodland, lingered the dim afterglow. In 
the distant sky hung an observation balloon, 
watching for the enemy's gun-flashes. Near 
us was the solitary grave of a Gordon High- 
lander, ''Corporal Kindness"- — a name that 
spoke to us of the fishing villages along the 
Moray Firth. The constant traffic of the 
transport on the pave rumbled up through 
the dark, mingling with the grumble of the 
guns. And a solitary piper was playing 
somewhere in the deepening night. The 
sentry was silhouetted against the sky, and 
voices from somewhere near reached us in 
low murmurings. Loneliness, sorrow, death, 
and a touch of home, all combined to make 
up for us a tone-picture of the war. And 



IN THE SALIENT 195 

as I lay down in my billet in a windowless 
cellar underneath a stair in an old farm- 
house, I listened unsleepingly to the wind 
wailing like a weeping woman, out over the 
miry fields in Flanders. Is it a wonder that 
we often thought of home — of the tall grey 
houses in our Northern towns, of the vil- 
lages by the shores, and the cottages in the 
glens, and the waves breaking softly on the 
crags in the island that we love, and the 
hearts, as unsleeping as ourselves, thinking 
of us there? 

The wonderful vitality of Nature in the 
Land of War gave a most pathetic interest 
to the shattered environment among which 
we lived and worked. By the mouth of one 
dug-out in a nasty trench, was a bower of 
beautiful roses, a memento of some old gar- 
den in the days before the war. The black- 
birds nested in the ruined orchards right in 
the heart of the World of Smash. The 
house-martin made his home under the tiles 
that still hang together on a broken roof. 
The church of Le Bizet is crushed into 
wreckage, but the sparrows twitter in the 
ruins. And at the great convent just along 
the road, where the piety of consecrated 
womanhood sang hymns and psalms, and 



196 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

chanted prayers, the little birds flit in and 
out as though the voice of praise were not 
to be altogether silenced by the growl of 
cannon and the crack of shrapnel. Once, 
at a nasty corner, when for a moment I hesi- 
tated to go forward, I felt as though re- 
buked by a thrush that sat upon a twig by 
the wayside, and sang of courage and of 
hope. I have often thought how the lark 
must wonder at the burst of shrapnel from 
the anti-aircraft guns, which occasionally 
invades his province as he sings at heaven's 
gate, above a war-ruined world. 

Another form of life that came in con- 
tact with us, and was not beloved by us, 
was the swarming crowd of rats. I remem- 
ber one night going down a track in the 
fields, and trying to pick my way with the 
help of occasional flashes of a pocket torch. 
At every flash I saw rats scurrying along 
the ruts. This will be one of the great prob- 
lems of the future of Belgium after the war. 

The cat and the dog were of course 
friends and companions, and were looked 
upon as being in reality of ourselves. 



XV 
THE BOYS 

Th^ work among the wounded is fre- 
quently trying beyond human endurance. 
Many a time I have felt how thankful I 
should have been for the relief of tears. I 
remember especially one day when an or- 
derly said to me, "Oh, Padre, this is a sad 
day in this tent!" That meant far more 
than the mere words conveyed; there were 
so many young brave lives there in anguish, 
maimed and stricken, swept in as though 
upon a tide of sorrow, from the Valley of 
the Shadow. And so little could be done. 
Words were futile. ''Hold my hand, 
Padre," begged one fine fellow, *'and I'll 
try to bear it till the doctor comes around." 
And it was a hand like flame that he put 
into mine. 

Their patience is perhaps more heart- 
breaking to look upon than their pain. One, 
with his leg torn off, said, "I must not com- 
plain. You see there are many really worse 

197 



198 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

off than myself." Once, on a hospital train, 
where a crowd of helpless men were being 
loaded up at a siding, I saw one man, groan- 
ing in agony from rheumatism, carried in. 
"Where are you wounded, old chap ?" asked 
the orderly. "Hoots," he replied, "I'm no 
wounded at a'. Fling me ony where. Look 
after the rest." 

Sorrow and suffering are verily big angels 
of God. We are learning, in a mystery. And 
we shall yet have worse — great sorrow for 
the nation, and empty firesides for thou- 
sands, in this crucifixion hour of the World; 
and for us, trying to help and uphold, the 
greater need for the grace of God. 

Every day you saw the tragedy of it. I 
recall a tent in which I was sitting beside 
a dying bed, and there was a screen up 
around the next one. The man there had 
a very severe head wound, and was inces- 
santly talking, as though giving quick orders 
to fellows near him. Now and again he 
would lift his clasped hands to his parched 
lips, and drink feverishly from an invisible 
water-bottle, resuming thereafter the ex- 
hausting trench drama in his dying delirium. 

In another tent were two chums from the 
same town and the same regiment, both 



THE BOYS 199 

dying. Jack's subconsciousness was busy, 
going through the fight again which had 
cost him his Hfe; and, as he would fall back, 
worn out, he would cry for his chum, "Bill ! 
Come on, Bill! Help! They're in." But 
poor Bill was passing away at the other end 
of the tent, utterly unconscious — the tide 
of life ebbing far out in silence, towards the 
main ocean, with no returning flood for 
these shores. 

I remember also at this time another, who 
suddenly slipped hold on life and went over 
the watershed. And he insisted on sitting 
up in bed, talking to invisibilities, whom he 
was showing out somewhere. "Good-bye — 
thank you!" he kept saying with a wan 
smile. He looked at you with eyes that 
seemed to see you, while yet looking through 
you at the unseen. And his "Good-bye — 
thank you!" almost broke your heart. 

The wounded were always keen on sou- 
venirs, and these were of great variety. 
The New Testament that had stopped a bul- 
let just above the heart was a frequent one, 
and perfectly genuine. A South African 
had been carrying in his Testament a photo- 
graph of his sweetheart, and the bullet 
stopped just in front of her face. It had 



200 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

made a bruise there, as though she had 
stepped in between him and death. He had 
been severely wounded, as it was, already, 
and the Testament was wrapped up in a 
bloody rag. He will not let that souvenir 
lightly go. It is, of course, true that any 
book would prove as efficient as a life pro- 
tector; but it is this Book that the soldier 
prefers to carry there. And more frequently 
than people think he reads it and carries 
much of it in his heart also. 

The passion for souvenirs sometimes 
seemed to mean more than the mere craze 
for collecting. I remember one grim fellow 
who insisted on having beside him a blood- 
encrusted German bayonet. I imagine it 
had a story of its own, with some import to 
himself. Others would sit dreamily caress- 
ing German helmets which they had 
brought with them from the field. 

Sometimes this passion led to curious ad- 
ventures. A Gordon Highlander had crept 
out to No Man's Land for souvenirs, and 
was coming back with a German helmet 
slung on his shoulder-strap. But he lost his 
bearings, and encountered two men of the 
Devons who had been out on some kind of 
scouting work. He very naturally crouched 



THE BOYS 201 

down as they approached, and they, crouch- 
ing also, saw in the dark, outlined against 
the sky, the German helmet. At that mo- 
ment he asked in his own dialect, tenta- 
tively, "D'ye ken faur the Gordons is?" Im- 
mediately they jumped to the conclusion 
that he was a German. One of them hit 
out at him with a rifle, and then both fled, 
but not before the Scot got his fists in upon 
them, thereafter he also making speedy 
tracks for his very life, as it seemed to him. 
In the morning he reported to the doctor 
at the Ambulance that he thought his arm 
must have been broken in the night by "twa 
German deevils." And the Devons also had 
an interview with the same functionary 
with a tale of a fierce onslaught made upon 
them by a terrible enemy, who had cursed 
them very volubly in a strange tongue. 
None of the three discovered the truth, 
though to an outsider it was perfectly clear 
— another proof that it is the bystander and 
not the actor himself who sees history in its 
true light. 

There are countless streaks of humour 
and gleams of laughter even amid the sor- 
row-clouds of war. How grateful we were 
when we found occasions like these. For 



202 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

though we were not downhearted we were 
often war- weary. And frequently the good 
cheer of those whom we were there to com- 
fort and strengthen, really strengthened and 
comforted us. 

I remember one Irishman, quite of the 
type of Micky Free in Lever's novel — a rol- 
licking jolly child of the Emerald Isle, pretty 
badly battered, but with a sparkle in his eye 
that you could light a candle at. He was 
from Dublin. I thought I should speak 
cheerfully to him, so I said, ''Well, now, 
aren't you lucky to be here, instead of home 
yonder, getting your head broken in a riot?" 
"Sure I am, sir," said he. 'Xucky to be 
here, anny way. And lucky is anny man if 
he'll only get a grave to lie in, let alone a 
comfortable bed like this. Glory be! — it's 
myself that's been the lucky one, all the 
time." 

Near him lay another. "Don't spake to 
him, your honour," said the first man. 
"Sure, he's a Sinn Feiner." But both of 
them were of opinion that the loyalty of the 
rebels might be awakened by contact with 
German shells. "Bring them out here, sir," 
said they, "and they won't be Irishmen if 
they don't get their dander riz with a whiz- 



THE BOYS 208 

bang flung at them. That would settle their 
German philandering. Sure, isn't it too bad 
what we've been enduring to enable the spal- 
peens to stay at home upsetting the State, 
flinging Home Rule back maybe a genera- 
tion with their foolishness, and we as good 
Irishmen as themselves can be?" 

The infinite variety of classes that make 
up the present army is astonishing. I told 
once of a Gordon Highlander landing in 
Havre with a copy of the Hebrew Psalter 
in the pocket of his khaki apron to read in 
the trenches. I saw, among our own Gor- 
dons, an Aberdeen divinity student, as a pri- 
vate, reading, in the mud, the Greek Testa- 
ment and the Sixth Book of Homer's Iliad. 
Anything, from that to the Daily Mail, rep- 
resents the reading of our men. This va- 
riety is also very noticeable among our of- 
ficers. We had the lumberman from the 
vast forests of the West, beside the account- 
ant from San Francisco, the tea-planter 
from Bengal, the lawyer from the quiet Fife 
town beside the Forth, the artist, the archi- 
tect, and the journalist. And it was this 
mixture that made possible episodes of irre- 
sistible comicality. 

For instance — to prevent waste of petrol 



204 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

in "joy riding," a French barrier at one 
place near us had guards set upon it, under 
a British officer. One day a young North- 
ern subaltern, entirely fresh to military 
work, was in charge, and the tale goes that 
he stopped Sir Douglas Haig's car, asking 
him to show his permit, and declare his busi- 
ness. When the General did tell who he 
was, the boy was so taken aback that he is 
said to have stammered, ''So pleased to meet 
you, sir." 

Again, a young officer of the Gordons told 
me that he was leading a well-known Gen- 
eral around some trenches in the dark. They 
came to a traverse. "We'll go round here," 
said the General, and the young fellow led 
the way. But a watchful Gordon leapt up 
suddenly, with fixed bayonet, and "Who 
goes there?" The youth replied, "General 
Blank." ''Ay, lad," whimsically replied the 
Scot, "ye'd better try again. That cock'll 
no fecht the Cock o' the North." 

Another, a verdantly green soldier of the 
King, almost freshly off the ploughed 
haughs of home, met an officer of high rank. 
He was carrying his rifle, but he huddled it 
under his arm, and awkwardly saluted with 
the open hand as though he had it not. The 



THE BOYS 205 

officer said, very kindly, "Here, my man, 
is the way to salute your superior with your 
rifle." And he went through the proper 
regulation field-officers' salute. But Jock, 
after coolly watching him, as coolly replied, 
"Ay — ay. Maybe that's your way o't; but 
I hae my ain way. And I'm no jist sure yet 
whilk's the richt gait o't." 

It would be worth while seeing this man 
after a few months' training has brought 
him into "the richt gait o't." In fact the 
way in which the men have fallen into the 
habit of discipline is as wonderful as the 
way they leapt into the line of service for 
their country's sake, when they were not 
forced to go. I remember one, who was a 
type of many. Up in the mouth of a West 
Highland glen is a little cottage on a croft. 
And the man there was the last of his race. 
When others passed out into the wide- 
Avorld conflict, in the beginning, his mother, 
who was very old, opposed his going. But 
she died. And then he drew his door to, 
locked it, and went to share the battle for 
liberty, which to-day is shaking the earth. 
There are far more men of peace than men 
of quarrel fighting to-day for the soul-com- 
pelling things that are of value beyond this 



^06 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

dying world. And these are made of the 
true victory stuff. 

None are less given to talk of what they 
have done than the very men whose deeds 
thrill others. They just saw the thing that 
was needed; they seized the flying moment, 
and did the deed that makes men's hearts 
stand still. They come out of it with some- 
thing akin to the elation of the sportsman 
who has scored a goal. They saved their 
side in the game. That was what they 
aimed at, and they are satisfied. 

In my last battalion were two men who, 
working together, did breathless things 
without themselves being breathless. They 
enjoyed them. After one *'stunt," our peo- 
ple in the trench observed a man hanging on 
the enemy's wire. His hand was slowly 
moving to and fro. They watched care- 
fully, and saw clearly that he was signalling 
to them. A little group of officers gathered 
and considered the matter. But it was en- 
tirely impossible, they thought, to dream of 
attempting a rescue before darkness. And 
they resolved to get together a rescue party 
in the night and save him. Meanwhile, 
however, these two worthies slipped away, 



THE BOYS 207 

crawled over No Man's Land, and brought 
the poor fellow in. Rebuked for their temer- 
ity, their reply was, ''We couldna thole the 
sicht o' a chum oot yonder like that." An- 
other time, after a bitter struggle in a patch 
of woodland between our line and the 
enemy's, they came and reported that a man 
in khaki was to be seen moving from tree 
stump to tree stump, evidently in distress. 
"I think he's daft," said one. And in the 
gloaming, over they went, found him, and 
brought him in to safety. He had been 
wounded in the head and side, and left be- 
hind. The first day he had kept himself 
alive by drinking from the water-bottles of 
the dead ; but he had lost his reason and his 
bearings, and was in despair when our 
brave fellows got him. And these men were 
killed, later on, by a slight accident, down 
behind the lines. 

It was difficult to get away from the touch 
of one's environment. One morning we had 
a weird reminder. When we opened the 
door of our hut, there on the threshold lay 
an unexploded "dud" shell which had fallen 
in the night. Had it done what had been 
intended we should have been very suddenly 



208 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

somewhere among the stars. It made one 
think a little, of solemn and strange things, 
and feel more than a little thankful to be- 
hold again the light of the sun. 



XVI 

LAUGHTER AND TEARS 

F^OPht speak a good deal about the lust 
for blood and the fever passion of, battle. 
But our boys are not bloodthirsty. A friend 
of mine, after a scrap, saw an example of 
that. It nearly cost himself his life, as he 
had to resist the tendency to laugh, for he 
had been shot through the lungs. A big 
Scotsman, in a muddy kilt and with fixed 
bayonet, had in his charge a German pris- 
oner who was very unwilling to get a move 
on. And Sandy shouted out to a comrade 
on ahead, "Hey, Jock! he winna steer. 
What'll I dae wi' him?" But Jock, busy 
driving his own man forward, just an- 
swered, over his shoulder, ''Bring him wi' 
you." Both of these men had the sweat of 
conflict not yet dry upon them. But they 
never for an instant thought, as the German 
would have thought more readily, of driv- 
ing the bayonet into that reluctant foe. Of 
course one does occasionally find the old 

209 



210 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

grim warrior still, quite content, under hard 
circumstances, finding indeed the conditions 
a kind of real relief after the rust of peace- 
ful days. This same friend, going one night 
along the trenches, almost thigh-deep in 
mud, came upon a grizzled Irishman, 
O'Hara, cowering in the rain. "Isn't this a 
damnable war, O'Hara?" said he. ''Thrue 
for you, sir," was the unexpected reply; 
*'but, sure, isn't it better than having no war 
at all?" 

A campaign like this brings us into touch 
with strange bedfellows. A man I know 
told me : "In one place, during the early, ter- 
rible days, we crept into a cellar, and I lay 
down to try to sleep. But I soon found this 
to be vain, for I became aware of somebody 
that kept running to and fro in the dark, 
making sleep quite impossible. I went out 
and spoke to the doctor, whom I met. *Oh,' 
he replied, 'that's only our lunatic' It was 
indeed a poor fellow who had gone mad in 
the retreat, and they could meanwhile do 
nothing but carry him along with them." 

Perhaps the weirdest of all the strange 
mixtures whom I met out at the front was 
a young fellow at a Mechanical Transport 
camp. His father was a Russian Jew; his 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 211 

mother was English; his grandfather 
Dutch; and himself born in London, and 
brought up in Glasgow. In a world of such 
widely international disturbance, you almost 
expected him to go off into effervescence like 
a Seidlitz. 

Amid the sorrow and the weariness of the 
times out there, it was remarkable how 
closely laughter followed at the heels of 
tears. We had great fun over a colonel 
who was very unpopular, in another divi- 
sion from ours. He did not know, however, 
the depths of his unpopularity, but, deem- 
ing himself the best-beloved among his con- 
temporaries, he was perfectly happy. One 
day, while he was sitting in front of his dug- 
out reading an old newspaper, a sniper's 
bullet passed quite close, and went "pip" 
into the parados. He paid no attention to 
it, for, of course, that was only a bit of the 
day's work. But when another came, he 
thought it was an attention which carried 
civility a little too far. So he called a 
Scotsman to him, and said, "Go out, Jock, 
and nail that beggar." Jock crawled out, 
glad of the diversion, stalked the enemy, 
"winged" him, and was running up to "fee- 
nish" him, when the German held up his 



212 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

arms and cried, "Mercy, Englishman!" But 
Jock replied, "Mercy? Ye dinna deserve 
nae mercy. Ye've missed oor colonel twice !" 
I often wonder if Jock told the colonel what 
he had said? Or is he still quite happy? 

It is told of Jock that on another occa- 
sion, when a German held up his hands, 
after a good deal of dirty work with them, 
and said, "Mercy, Englishman! I'll go to 
England with you," Jock replied grimly and 
coolly, "Maybe, but ye see that's no exactly 
whaur I'm gaun to send ye." 

I was always very much impressed by the 
Wesleyans whom I often met in painful 
circumstances. I had never had anything 
to do with them before, till I came in contact 
with them wounded and suffering, but 
always most brave, patient, and truly re- 
ligious. They bore their distresses without 
a murmur, and they died without fear. For 
they knew what they believed in. They had 
the gift of religion, and the secret of a faith 
stronger than death. They were true Mys- 
tics. I remember one day standing beside 
one of them who had been very dangerously 
stricken. His eyes were closed, and he was 
whispering continuously. I stooped down 
and listened. He was saying over and over„ 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 213 

"O God, remember me, and help me to get 
well, for the sake of those I love at home." 
I was turning to slip away quietly, when he 
opened his eyes and said, ''Whoever you are, 
don't go, sir. I was only speaking to God." 
His religion was so intimate a possession 
that he did not need to apologize for knock- 
ing at the door of love with his prayer. 

Sometimes we were struck to read what 
people at home were saying and writing, 
and especially about the duty of keeping 
"sunshine faces." It seemed frequently to 
us like speaking of the weather to a dying 
man. It is so easy to write or speak like 
that in a comfortable chair at home, but to 
the man in a muddy trench or in a hospital 
ward, or beside a clay hole where what is 
left of the brave is hastily huddled away 
while the shells scream overhead, it sounds 
like very cheap and shallow claptrap. The 
worst of it is, that these people always 
seemed to say it at the wrong time, when we 
were sore at heart and weary. It jarred on 
us then. What we felt we needed was hearts 
spread out for the pity of Christ to fall on 
them like summer rain. We did try to be 
bright, while our hearts were breaking for 
the poor boys bravely stemming the cries 



214 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

that rose to their Hps out of their pain or 
when they died in the stretcher as you car- 
ried them, ere they reached the doctor's tent. 
If prayer ever meant anything for human- 
ity, if Christ ever meant anything Hke 
strength for trial, it is now. Or else it is 
never. And nothing. And despair. Every- 
thing else is vain but that. 

Nothing could be more pathetic, and often 
at the same time funnier, than meeting men 
past military age, who sometimes, for the 
sake of their boys serving, had slipped into 
the army, mentally folding down a corner of 
their birth certificate over the date, salving 
their consciences as did one who said to 
me, "I told them I was thirty-four — but I 
didn't say on what birthday." I remember 
one old Scot who could scarcely move, tell- 
ing me, "I doot I'll hae to get awa' hame. 
Thae rheumatics is nae guid in the trenches, 
and they're girnin' at me again." Of course 
he had "a laddie lyin' up yonder," and a 
nephew, and a "guid-sister's half-brither," 
and so on, like the rest. And if it were not 
for these pains he would be as good as ever 
he was! Some time later I met him in the 
rain, and asked how he felt now. "Oh," 
said he, "I'm jist fine the day. I saw my 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 215 

youngest laddie gaun up, and I'd a word or 
twa wi' him. I'll be writin' his mither the 
nicht aboot it. He was lookin' grand." 

I called on one old woman at home, and 
she told me that her husband had only the 
previous day, which was his birthday, gone 
off to France. "Eh," said she, with unction, 
"he's a guid man, my man. I often think 
I was a lucky woman to have sic a man. 
D'ye ken — he never told a lie." "And yes- 
terday was his birthday?" I inquired. "And 
how old was he?" "He was fifty-eight," was 
her answer. But when I asked how this 
modern rival of George Washington had got 
into the army, she innocently replied, "Ye 
see, he said he was thirty-twa." 

How these elderly men endured, for any 
length of time at all, the discomforts of the 
front was beyond understanding. They 
were of course frequently caught when 
youth was more able to skip out of the way 
of death. The little shell-swept graveyards 
at the front doubtless got many of them very 
soon. 

I spoke some time since of some of the 
forgotten and overlooked departments of 
our army. There are plenty such, of course, 
but one cannot help recalling amongst these 



216 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the Battalion Runners, who carry messages 
over No Man's Land, or anywhere, from 
post to post, when air and earth are filled 
with hissing death, and who also act as 
guides up to the trenches. They are abso- 
lutely fearless. Their type varies, from the 
gaunt silent figure that stalks before you, 
like an Indian, through the dark, to the gar- 
rulous fellow who talks all the time over his 
shoulder as he goes. One of the latter was 
leading up our men, and the colonel said to 
him, "I hear that these dug-outs are 
wretched water-logged holes." '' 'Deed, 
they are that," replied the guide. And then 
gently, as if on a tender after-thought, "D'ye 
ken, sir, I'm often vexed for you, for I'm 
perfectly convinced that you're accustomed 
to something better than yon at home." 

Another is the military policeman who 
controls and guides the trafiic at the cross 
roads, and where there is constant danger 
of shells falling, in such places as the Square 
at Ypres. There, amongst evidences of 
steady peril, stands this quiet man with the 
red band on his arm, and he steps forward 
to warn you that it is not safe to be there! 
I cannot forget one road when we were mov- 
ing up to the front. The stream of life flow- 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 217 

ing on towards the fighting area was like the 
Strand in London at its busiest. The po- 
liceman with uplifted hand controlling the 
traffic was as powerful there as at home. In 
a moment, at the signal, limbers, guns, mo- 
tor lorries, ambulances, mounted men and 
marching infantry stood motionless, for 
miles back till permitted to go on again. 

The directions we got one day from an 
Irish policeman were unforgettable. He 
said, "It's quite easy to find, your honour. 
You see — when you go into Albert you 
don't go into it at all. But you turn to the 
right, keeping well to the left, all the way." 
We thanked him heartily, and trusted to 
Providence as we are apt to do where there 
is nothing else that can be done. And fol- 
lowing our directions in a general way, we 
reached our place in safety. 

Again, you will find right up behind the 
front the roadman busy — coolly filling up 
holes that shells have made, and behaving 
just as though he were working on a stretch 
of the Trossachs, or patching up the rut- 
worn tracks that the rain has damaged along 
by Kyle. 

It is in the air branch of the service that 
chivalry remains most markedly. Of course 



218 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

in our navy you still get it, when you find 
our men risking their lives and their ships 
to save drowning enemies. But in the air 
service there is a mysterious spirit of gen- 
erosity between foes that is almost as strik- 
ing as the superlative courage of the com- 
batants. 

I saw not long since a very keen battle, 
far up in the blue. Two German aeroplanes 
were being pursued by ours. I never hoped 
to see such skill in flying. They looped the 
loop, they dived, they rallied — they seemed 
to outdo the swallows in their art. Then 
one, winged, fell a great height, recovering 
quite near the earth ; and, crawling off, limp- 
ingly managed to escape. Somehow we felt 
relieved, although he was a foe. The other, 
however, was driven down, like a blind 
thing. Every avenue of escape he tried was 
closed, as if by the wings of eagles, by our 
airmen. But we were quite sorry when we 
heard that when he reached the earth he 
was dead, shot through the heart in the last 
stage of his flight. 

These men are amongst the most wonder- 
ful we have. I saw two who had been six 
miles beyond the German lines. At about 
ten thousand feet in the air they had been 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 219 

attacked by enemy aeroplanes, and their ma- 
chine set on fire. Yet they came back, 
burned, but undaunted, and landed within 
our lines, as though they had been at a 
picnic. 

And a young friend of mine, shot through 
the foot, probably lamed for life, told me 
how, at a great height, he had been attacked. 
He swooned from his hurt, and fell, but re- 
covered consciousness in time to get his ma- 
chine again in hand, and landed safely two 
hundred yards across our lines. 

There can be no braver hearts than those. 
Many a time we looked up at them, sailing 
overhead, and wondered; and the roughest 
Tommy sends something like a prayer with 
them as they go. 

I have said little about the Germans in 
all this. But the folks at home must never 
for a moment forget what this fight means 
to the enemy, as it does to ourselves. It is 
a fight to the finish for life or death. Our 
prisoners are not, as the papers love to make 
out, a ragged, wretched set of degenerates. 
They are for the most part, as I have seen 
them, burly, well-fed, and well-clothed sol- 
dierly men. 

I spoke to one officer after the Push be- 



220 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

gan last year. He was lying badly wound- 
ed on a stretcher, and he used such faultless 
English that I asked him at what school in 
England he had been. He said, "I never 
was in England in my life. I learned all my 
English in Shanghai where 1 was in busi- 
ness." I asked him when he thought the 
war would finish, and he replied, "When the 
last man is killed on either side." I also 
asked him what he thought of his people's 
Zeppelin raids and submarine outrages on 
the Lusitania and kindred ships. And he 
said, "We who have been out of Germany 
all our lives wonder why the people in au- 
thority at home persist in these world-rous- 
ing tactics, foolish and cruel, and futile be- 
yond reason. We want to fight soldiers like 
ourselves, and not to slay innocent women 
and children." He expressed surprise at 
the number of men he had seen behind our 
lines, as he was carried through, and I said, 
"Don't be surprised. That is nothing. Go 
a hundred, ay, thousands of miles behind — 
and you will find men all the world over, 
with their faces and their hearts set for vic- 
tory or death towards this battle-line, 
against this outrage you have let loose upon 
the civilization and liberty of to-day." There 



LAUGHTER AND TEARS 221 

are no greater capital errors than to despise 
your enemy or to over-estimate your ally, 
as we have learned, only too bitterly. Do 
not let us forget it, or the victory the world 
needs will slip from our grasp. 



XVII 
THE PRINCE 

It was after dinner, and we were all chat- 
ting, for we had not seen the doctor for an 
age. Suddenly somebody came in and said, 
"The Prince is dead." 

We sprang up and looked at one another. 

''Surely," cried the doctor, ''they haven't 
allowed him to the firing linel" 

But another asked, "What Prince?" 

And the bearer of evil tidings said, "Allan 
Mairi Roy." 

And in a flash I saw him — "the Prince," 
as we always called him, straight and beau- 
tiful — a hero in look and figure. And be- 
hind him I saw the croftland of which he 
was the pride — the green plots on the pla- 
teau high above the sea, and the roofs of the 
houses shining in the sun-burst after the 
rain — the croftland that has not to-day a 
child's laughter in it, where there is no 
mother with a babe at her breast, where 
there is not now a young man or a young 



THE PRINCE 223 

woman to carry on the line of those that 
have grown old in the fields where they have 
toiled. 

Can it really be so long since they were 
all so handsome and so young, those fine 
Macraes and Mackenzies — and the girls that 
were so beautiful, with the blush which the 
kiss of the wind, like a lover's, had planted 
on their cheek? Is it really long years since 
the question used to be, when one returned 
tanned from the East, and looked in the 
morning across the river to the crofts, *'Who 
is the beauty now? Who holds the palm to- 
day?" And the answer was, "Oh! Mairi 
Roy. Dhia — there's none comes near her. 
She's the queen!" 

They were not like others, up there above 
the sea. Their portion was not hard and 
strained endeavour. Their land was not 
like some lands — "girnin' a' winter, greetin' 
a' summer." Their houses were not broken- 
down, crumbling things of clay, with drag- 
gled thatch, scarce a shelter from the west- 
ern rain. There was no sodden uncleanness 
about the doors. And the men, graceful, 
stepping like stags, came into the church like 
gentlemen, carrying with them the soft fra- 
grant aroma of the peat. In fact, they were 



2M THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

a prosperous community apart — the plateau 
and the glen behind divided up amongst 
them into a "club tenancy/' an ideal mode of 
securing to the country a brave peasantry. 
But they were not given to marrying. And 
when Mairi Roy married Calum Ban it was 
a great event in the homes above the sea. 
And who shall say what it meant when her 
little boy was born? Then, as he grew up, 
like a bit of sunshine, playing amongst the 
cottages there, the hearts that had no chil- 
dren of their own to love, worshipped him 
with affectionate pride, and he became the 
prince of the crofts above the sea. And he 
was worthy of the title, for he was all a 
prince should be. But now they all are old, 
and Mairi, in her widowhood, is left alone; 
and the sunshine will be dark for her; 
and she will heed neither the wind nor the 
rain; for her prince is lying dead — dead in 
the beauty of his young manhood, in the 
wonder of his promise, in the fulness of his 
strength, where the brave fell in a brave 
man's fight above the Dardanelles. 

And there is irony in his death. For, 
when he was but a youth, off he went to a 
great university in the south to learn to be 
a healer of men. What a doctor he would 



THE PRINCE 226 

have made ! How proud people would have 
been to see the fine figure coming to their 
door ! To look at him was to feel well. But 
Mairi could not bear the thought of him 
being away from her. The world felt empty 
without him. Her tears and prayers broke 
right across his dream. So she brought him 
back to be beside her in the fields above the 
sea. And now he is in the darkness of the 
grave where the winding Dardanelles shine 
in the Eastern sun. Yet little did she know. 
She brought him back to have his share in 
the splendour of sacrifice for the healing of 
the nations. 

It is another tragedy of the croftlands, 
where so many a promise, so many a beau- 
tiful thing of poesy has gone out like a can- 
dle quenched in the wind. For this boy 
could not spend his life away from useful- 
ness. And when the Empire began to think 
of the people in the islands and the glens, 
they gave "the Prince" a position in which 
he might organize the means that were being 
used to give the remnant of the old race a 
foothold in the land their fathers had fought 
for. It was a position with some honour at- 
tached to it. There was money in it for his 
labour. He would have had a life of credit 



226 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

and of usefulness, and Mail i's old age would 
have been spent in ease. 

But the cry went through the West, when 
the shadow of war, like a heavy mist, crept 
northwards over the hills. And when the 
men of the West went in their thousands, 
leaving the corn to be reaped by the old, who 
were weary, his heart too felt the call, and 
again he answered the voice of duty, and 
followed the sound of the marching feet that 
were seeking, out of the quiet places, the 
crash of the battlefield, for the liberty of 
the world and the truth of God. 

And, again, there was yet another irony 
in it all. For the little mountain battery 
seemed so insignificant that men, sometimes, 
at the beginning of the Great War, laughed 
at the thought of the village boys with their 
light guns ever being of use. "Oh," said 
they, "they'll be decorations in Bedford or 
in Rothesay. What would they be doing 
with mountain guns in Flanders or in 
France?" 

Little did they think, as they spoke, of 
the craggy forts by the terrible Dardanelles, 
or of the deeds, incredible in difiiculty, un- 
paralleled in heroism, that would be called 



THE PRINCE 227 

for from the boys of the village by the sea. 
What seemed impossible, they had their 
manly share in ; and in the great things that 
matter they bore their manly part. 

But in the croftland on the plateau this 
is the crowning tragedy. The only young 
life that was there has been extinguished; 
and when the old have passed away, and 
been carried to the graveyard where the 
manse burn sings beside their sleeping dust 
in the daylight and the dark, till the trumpet 
call of God shall tear apart the stillness of 
the glen on Judgment Morn, there is none 
other of their line to face the sunshine and 
the rain, the seed-time and the harvest; for, 
since "the Prince" is dead, in battle by the 
Dardanelles, the hope of youth has passed 
away from the fields above the sea. 

Forget not him and his like, oh, ye for 
whom they fall! And, when the day of 
peace returns, scatter not any more into far 
lands "a brave peasantry, their country's 
pride," lest, once again, in the hour of dark- 
ness and of pain, the cry go through the 
glens, and only stir the grasses of the grave- 
yard, and the weeds among the ruins where 
once the true hearts had their homes. 



228 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

Far away in the mountains, far where the fathers 
lie, 
Who shall blame us, if ever our thoughts must 
roam, 
Hearing in towns the song of the waves that wash 
on the shores of Skye, 
Far away, where the West is waiting her children 
turning home? 



XVIII 

SONS OF THE MANSE 

I WELL remember the bright-faced boys, 
keen-eyed and happy-hearted. And I recall 
the homes they came from, some in places 
remote, far from the din and struggle of 
the industrial world, others in the heart of 
towns, or on the outskirts of villages. Who 
does not know the typical Scottish manse, 
tall and grey among the stately trees, under 
whose immemorial shadows generations of 
ministers have passed? The snowdrops 
peeped in the spring-time from the sward; 
the children's laughter echoed through the 
rambling passages, and in the garden. And 
at night, when the house was still, the vil- 
lagers passed quietly, lest they should dis- 
turb the brooding of him whose shadow 
crossed the blind, thinking of the needs of 
the parish, the faith he had to strengthen, 
the sorrows he had to comfort, and the anx- 
ieties he had to dispel. Or it might be by 
the verge of some western loch, or on some 
229 



S30 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

island in the Hebrides, where every room 
was filled, as by a haunting presence, with 
the sob and the sigh of that vast Melancholy 
whose salt tide ebbs and flows eternally 
about the shores of all the world. 

The manse taught hospitality. Its door 
opened inward always; and never a grief 
nor a necessity was turned away unsolaced 
or unhelped. Was there any wonder that 
the interest in the children of the manse was 
most frequently the paramount interest of 
the parish? There was not an old woman 
or an old man in the village but felt entitled, 
personally, to wonder what the boys were 
doing, what their future was to be, or what 
country they were wandering in. 

I remember the excitement of the village 
when a child was born to the minister. The 
bell rang as joyful an appeal as its solemn 
tones could muster. The Boys' Brigade 
paraded, and, with their band of four or five 
flute-players, marched through all the streets 
and lanes, playing the only tune they knew, 
which very suitably was There's a Friend 
for little Children! 

The sons of the manse grew up, and they 
went away to big cities to be prepared for 
universities and for life. There used to be 



SONS OF THE MANSE 231 

so many of them — in some parishes the 
manse bairns, with the children of the 
beadle, sometimes making up almost the 
whole roll of the Sunday School. But in 
modern times so many of them were only 
sons. 

It was natural, when the cry of war broke 
across the world, when the appeal of lib- 
erty threatened and honour overthrown 
stirred every brave heart to the utmost of 
its manhood, that the boys of the manse 
should step forward among the foremost for 
the defence of what they had learned to 
love, ready for sacrifice for home and God. 
The children of no other class have eclipsed 
these for loyalty. Over ninety per cent, of 
the sons of the Scottish manses have gone 
freely to the colours, and, in their dying, 
shot by the sniper, or stumbling into death 
in the charge through shrapnel, hissing bul- 
let, suffocating gas, and blinding smoke, 
they have written in their blood a sacred 
record of the value of example and the 
deathless wonder of love and humanity. 
Alas! with them has passed into the silence 
of the grave, in France, Flanders, Gallipoli, 
and elsewhere, so much of the intellect, the 
scholarship, the tender helpfulness of to- 



g32 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

morrow and its activities, that the world is 
undoubtedly the poorer for the passing of 
the ministers' sons to death. That this is 
so is proved by even a glimpse into the rec- 
ord of their achievements in the past. You 
have only to dip into Who's Who to see how 
many, in the spheres of war and peace, have 
gone through the manse gate into the climb- 
ing ways of honour in the service of hu- 
manity. 

And so I recall some of them. Their 
fathers and mothers I knew — loved them as 
friends, and thought of them as neighbours, 
though it meant sometimes long miles be- 
tween their manse and ours. I remember 
the happy children — the quiet boys with 
studious eyes, gentle and shrinking. It is 
strange to think of them falling in the din 
of battle and the strenuous warfare of 
struggling men. You could not believe that 
some of them would ever be found in such 
environment. Others, of course, were sol- 
diers born — with the hot indignation over 
wrong, or shame, oppression, cruelty, or 
crime, which is the secret of a fearless heart. 

One, when he came back from the front, 
out of the muddy trenches, where the boys 
were dying round him, spent the time of his 



SONS OF THE MANSE 233 

brief leisure in the little bosky glen where 
he had played as a child. The burn that 
tinkled over the stones, and gurgled under- 
neath the grasses, or lay in quiet pools 
wherein the brown trout were dreaming, 
brought again his peaceful childhood round 
about his heart, and he came back every 
evening solemnized as though a spirit had 
been speaking to him. "I will carry that 
music," he said, "back to the trenches when 
I go. Home is worth fighting for, and the 
places that one loves." He went with the re- 
membrance back to the Land of War, and 
the sniper caught him. There is a cross on 
his grave in Flanders, and a deep scar in the 
hearts of those who never can forget him — 
who will remember his prattle and his prom- 
ise, seeing him always as the little child with 
the sunshine of hope above him, when he 
played in the tiny glen at home. 

From among the Southern hills, lonely 
as any Highland territory, came another. 
He won note and distinction as a scholar, 
and was set by his country in a place of 
honour on the outposts of empire. But he 
came back at duty's call; and, in the Land 
of War, Death put a crown of conquest on 
his golden curls. For those that loved him, 



2S4i THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the glens seem now all clothed with a deep- 
er stillness than ever they had known. 

And there was one whose blood was 
stirred by the appeal; and he came back 
twelve thousand miles to fight or die for the 
heritage of his fathers. And he too sleeps 
where the brave are sleeping. 

Another — how the Gordon blood moved 
in him! And when he got the Gordon tar- 
tan on him, how keen he was ! And he was 
never to see his twenty years. And though 
the sorrow of the manse was crowned with 
a pathetic pride, because the. boy had been 
so brave, yet the hearts there grew, of a 
sudden, very old; and mirth went out from 
them for ever. 

And away in the island where the serried 
peaks rise majestically star wards, looking 
out across the distant waters to the mystery 
beyond, the quiet folks are wondering why 
the dreams of the returning find no answer 
save the saddest, in the dawn. For more 
manses than one have heard the heart-stun- 
ning tidings that their only boy has run 
hastily up the pathway to the sun, and told 
Him who also, still, has wound-marks for 
others on His hands and feet and side, why 
so soon their souls have sought His pres- 



SONS OF THE MANSE 235 

ence, when the world has yet need for young 
enthusiasms of the brave. East, west, 
north, south, the winds are whispering of 
the unreturning. And the hearts of quiet 
worshippers are hushed as with the presence 
of the Divine, while they behold the early 
snows of age marking the locks of him 
whose heart so recently was young. And 
the sorrows of the village and the parish feel 
a rebuke of selfishness pass through them 
while they are comforted by him in whose 
deep breast abides for evermore the sorrow 
for the only son. 

But the list seems endless, and as you sit 
brooding by the fire, face after shadowy face 
looks into your heart, stirring regretful re- 
membrance. 



XIX 
THE SPIRITUAL FUTURE 

This is a war of vision, and it has in- 
evitably widened the outlook of all men, but 
especially the outlook of those churchmen 
and men of theology who have been brought 
into living contact with it. Out in the land 
of war, dogma has become like the burden- 
some kit which a soldier flings away from 
him as he enters the stern conflict where 
death jostles life, in closest contest for the 
victory. You have neither time nor room 
for the trimmings of the faith. You are 
right down, there, on the prime elements. 
You have to do with neither praying car- 
pet, candles, nor vestments, but with the 
stark souls of men, seeing, often, through 
cracks in the flimsy partitions that have been 
run up between time and eternity, the heart 
of a man and God. 

If you speak to men out there, you know 
you are speaking to the souls that ere a few 
hours pass will have taken the final step 

236 



THE SPIRITUAL FUTURE 237 

across the Great Divide; and, even if they 
weather the cataclysmic blast that will soon 
beat upon them, they will come back as those 
who have looked into the well at the world's 
end, and learned something of the mystery 
of the Beyond. Life, in that moment of 
your speaking, takes on a meaning deeper 
than you or they have dreamed heretofore. 
You must speak as to those whose faces you 
may never see again till you see the face of 
God. 

What, then, do you speak of in such an 
hour of stress? You speak of the very 
things that make for unity, the absolute fun- 
damentals that in time of trial give steadi- 
ness and courage to the soul. These are: 
the love of God, in Jesus Christ, who stood 
up for those who could not stand up for 
themselves, and died to conquer sin and to 
give the weak a chance — the imperative 
power of His example; the splendour of sac- 
rifice for others, and for the sake of liberty, 
honour, and purity; the all-conquering in- 
fluence of the clean, straight life, and the 
fact that God does not forget the soul that 
has gone through its Calvary upon the Cross 
of Duty. And, then, the deathlessness of 
that spirit which animates the clay, and that 



238 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

hope of a meeting, after the parting here, 
which lights the face of the dying as with a 
sunburst from the Land of Dawn. 

I have seen that light, and it extinguishes 
all the little candles of sectarian creeds. 
Christ comes, at such a time, out of the far 
perspective through which we see Him at 
home, in our narrow environments, in times 
of peace and ease, wherein we find such 
leisure to create and formulate so many 
things which divide. These all go off, like 
will-o'-the-wisps in the sunrise, when Christ 
comes on to His right, which is the full pos- 
session of the soul of a man. 

Things that are worlds apart come 
strangely together in a time like this. For 
example, in Havre, in the cemetery, there is 
a grave marked by a simple symbol of me- 
morial love, which more than anything 
shews how a great and deep experience like 
this crisis binds together remote discordant 
elements. It marks the resting-place of a 
North African Moslem, and tender hands 
that laid him to sleep there placed over his 
dust the cross, emblem of the faith of those 
for whom he fell, and on the cross they en- 
graved the crescent and the star, the emblem 
of his own faith which had upheld him in his 



THE SPIRITUAL FUTURE 239 

sacrifice! I wonder if there is another me- 
mento Hke that anywhere else in the world ! 
The thought of home and the love of our 
dear ones moulded and coloured our religion 
out there. The fundamentals are surely 
rooted in these. 

We always thought of the brave woman- 
hood at home, of the sufferings of love that 
had said good-bye for ever — of the little 
babes that were being born who would never 
see their fathers' faces. 

If once you heard those marching feet, if 
once you saw the suffering borne without 
complaint, the agony mastered by manhood 
— if once you heard in our camps The Lord's 
my Shepherd, or Lead, Kindly Light, sung 
by those who might never sing them again — 
if once you saw those men bowed down in 
prayer for you and those they loved at home, 
and heard the "Amen" wrung out of earnest 
hearts, you would wonder what you have 
done that these should die for you ; and you 
would understand as in the flash of a new 
and fresh revelation the secret of the spell 
of sacrifice, and the meaning of the wounds 
of Christ, in a way beyond the power of hu- 
man word's expression. 

This war has a real touch of the hand of 



240 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

God in it. God is smiting the drowsy 
luxurious world upon its side, stirring it out 
of ease and selfishness to recognition of duty 
and right ere He leads it out under the vast 
quiet of the stars. He is asking a great price 
from us as the cost of our awakening — sacri- 
fice of life, sacrifice of money, the loss of 
many dear to us. It has cost much already, 
but it will cost more. And if the world does 
not wake to the necessity this great campaign 
will cost everything. It has taken us all our 
time to hold the enemy where they are. 
Think what it will cost us to drive them out 
of France, to drive them out of Belgium, to 
humble them until they learn in a stern and 
real humiliation the secret of the true great- 
ness of a nation. It is sad to say good-bye, 
but, considering the issues that are involved, 
I say to those who have lost their loved and 
dear, ''Clothe yourselves in a proud thank- 
fulness rather than sorrow, ye fathers and 
mothers, for the brave boys that ye begot 
and bore, who wore their wounds like roses 
as they went home to God. Be proud that 
your flesh and blood were not degenerate in 
the day of sacrifice for others. There is the 
glory that is around the Crown of Thorns 
about your sorrow." 



THE SPIRITUAL FUTURE 241 

I could not help sometimes remembering 
the Swiss patriot who, with his band of 
peasants, armed with clubs, ene day came 
up against a host of steel-clad Austrians, 
with their long and terrible spears. He 
could find no way of penetrating their pha- 
lanx, and hope was dying in their hearts, and 
liberty with it. But he turned round to his 
peasants and said, "Wait, I will make way 
for liberty." And stretching out his arms, as 
Christ stretched out His arms upon the 
Cross, he clutched in one sweep all the spears 
he could gather, and thrust them into his 
body, as he leaned down to the earth, weigh- 
ing them down as he fell. And as he stum- 
bled unto death he shouted, "Make way for 
liberty." Through the door his body made 
the peasants leaped to victory or death. 
That is what our boys are doing out yonder. 
In the splendour of their sacrifice for us we 
learn more and more the wonder and the 
sacrifice of Christ Himself for you and me. 

Out yonder I have seen a crowded hut, or 
a tent filled to overflowing, with no thought 
of Church or creed or ritual, but swayed, as 
the wheat is swayed by the breath of the 
ripening autumn, by the one great thought 
of Him who died. I have seen the Catholic, 



242 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

with his crucifix in his hands, beside the 
Anglican, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, 
and the man of no Church, rapt in the 
thought of the Comrade of the Way of Sac- 
rifice, and of His wounding for the souls of 
men. Chaplains of all the Churches worked 
together, came into conference together, and 
became absorbed in the one purpose of win- 
ning men's hearts for God, their own hearts 
having been surrendered to the Highest;, 
their prejudices burned to ashes in the fire 
of such great service. 

It seemed to me as though at home our 
faith had been silting down upon its founda- 
tions till the lintels were getting too low, 
and the roofs contracted. 

We have come through aji earthquake 
heave, and have awakened to the fact that 
there is, behind ecclesiastical disputings, the 
still small voice all the while. War, the 
short stride between life and death, the close 
breathing of the Eternal, put ecclesiastical 
controversies and declarations aside. You 
only see a brother dedicate to death, for you ; 
you give the symbols of the broken body and 
the shed blood of Him who died to bring the 
immortal that is chained to humanity into 
tune with the Infinite; and I tell you, you 



THE SPIRITUAL FUTURE 243 

can almost hear God speak in the tensity of 
such a moment's quivering reality. 

The men are ready for Christ. We hear, 
sometimes, warnings against taking a state- 
ment like that in its bald, plain significance. 
We are told that disbanded armies have not 
been spiritual forces, and that armies, at 
any time, have not been hosts of saints. We 
are told that many of the men have been un- 
changed by the terrible appeal of war. That 
is quite true. But this also is truth. There 
never was an army like that which is fight- 
ing for us to-day; and there never was an 
ideal or a cause like that which has inspired 
its efforts and its sacrifice. The whole 
army beats with the pulse of the noblest of 
our flesh and blood. It is not the gathering 
of a mass of professional fighters; it is the 
assembling of true men dedicated to win or 
die for the sake of the honour of God, the 
liberty of the world, and the growth of the 
soul of goodness. These things have none 
of the accidental in them. They are not of 
one school or another of theological thought 
— of one form or another of ecclesiastical 
life. They have within them the funda- 
mentals. And that fact, combined with the 
fact of the kind of men who are fighting and 



244 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

dying for them, is what makes for such a 
thing as unity of outlook Godwards in the 
Land of War. 

What then? If we do not prepare our- 
selves at home for the home-coming of such 
an impulse and conviction, we shall be guilty 
of a great apostasy — a denial of the Holy 
Spirit. We must sternly shut our eyes to in- 
fallible and exclusive claims that have too 
long been allowed to masquerade in ecclesi- 
astical guise, and get closer to the big spir- 
itual facts, which are not bound up in forms 
or in ascending hierarchies, but which are 
lamps for life's dark pathways, stepping- 
stones in life's deep streams, and vessels full 
of comfort and refreshing for pilgrims on 
the way through the crowded streets or 
over the narrow desert between Now and 
the Beyond. 

To-day is the opportunity coming to the 
Church, to be no longer the mere repository 
of gramophone records of past opinions, 
but rather to be the vehicle and instrument 
of God's living thought — an angel by the 
highway, to lead the weary to the well of 
life. There is the principle of healing and 
of unity in that. My work among our 
brave men oversea has convinced me so. 



XX 

AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 

It may be said that it is too soon yet to 
speak of such a subject; that the War — 
which is quite possible, in consequence of 
recent unforeseen events among the AlHes 
— may last another two years; and that, 
even after that, it may take two years more 
before the vast military machinery is un- 
locked and the army liberated from its vigil. 
Very well; let it be so. The day is past, 
long since, when people spoke of the War 
as going to be a three months' push to 
Berlin. It was foolish talk ; but people liked 
it, and looked on those who said that it was 
folly, as being only the greater fools, if not, 
indeed, touched with treason. Time's bit- 
terest revenge is, of course, after all, the 
shifting of the fool's cap on to the heads of 
those who have a right to it, and did not 
know their privilege. The folly still per- 
sists in some places; but, if we would be 
wise, the only conclusion that is safe is that 

245 



246 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

the War will end when it has finished its 
purpose. And that finish is not near. For 
the task is the greatest the world of right- 
eousness has ever faced. The foe is the most 
stubborn, the best prepared, that ever has 
taken the field, and with resources of all evil 
so plentiful, that the work of conquest is 
colossal. Yet it must be done, and done to 
the last lap ; otherwise it will only mean the 
facing of it again and again, later on. The 
pain, the horror, the sorrow, the loss, the 
ruin to civilization and the world of Nature 
and of man, are such, and so vast, that, if 
it must be, let it be one great tragedy rather 
than a serial, a thing of successive acts. 
When the curtain falls, it must fall upon it 
for ever. We must face it so. 

But, if it be as we think, we must also 
remember that it will take as long as the 
War lasts, however long that be, to get 
ready at home for the end of it. 

Whatever is to be done after the War 
must be done in the spirit that made us enter 
upon it. And that was the spirit of sacrifice, 
the free sacrifice of free men for the sake of 
freedom and light. Freedom and light must 
be secured after the War, or it has been 
futile sacrifice. 



AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 247 

President Wilson said the other day that 
the purpose of the War was to crush the 
German power, because that was a thing 
"without conscience or honour, or capacity 
for covenanted peace," — "a menace of 
combined intrigue and force." It is, indeed, 
a thing of hideous perversity, an anomaly 
and anachronism, which has broken out of 
the darkest Tophet of the Middle Ages into 
the peace, prosperity, liberty, and hope of 
modern civilization, religion, and settled life 
of nations. There can be no compromise 
with that. The devil keeps no treaties, 
though he makes many. Even those who love 
peace most of all cannot endure the continu- 
ance or the triumph of such a horror, with- 
out identifying themselves with falseness, 
cruelty, and wrong. 

And yet to-day, every heart that loves, 
longs for peace; but never on the basis of 
things before the War. The graves across 
the world forbid that. The shades of the 
brave would forbid the banns between Right- 
eousness and Wrong. 

Who would not have peace and prosperity 
rather than war's devastation and distract- 
ing anxieties, with the shadow of death over 
almost every home? We fight not merely 



^48 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

at command of any earthly king, but of the 
King of kings, as one great democracy, not 
for war's brutalities, but for the sweetness of 
the life of peace, shocked to its foundation 
by the Prussian terror. 

That we shall come out of it victors for 
Honour's sake, because we must, unless the 
world perish, justifies our thought of what 
will have to be, after the War is over. We 
believe in the righteousness of God, who 
never yet left Honour and Liberty to perish. 
We may emerge from it stripped bare, a 
victor only in our nakedness, a world im- 
poverished, shorn of the splendour of our 
youth, and the hope of our manhood, yet 
with honour still the precious jewel of our 
soul intact. We plough to the end of the 
furrow, though we sweat tears of blood in 
our ploughing. There is no other way to 
raise the harvest of peace and victory. 
There is no looking back. This is our Cal- 
vary, and we hope for resurrection victory, 
when we have finished our vigil there. 

Now, what is to be after the War, must be 
faced with the same high purpose, the same 
wide and steady view, the same vastness of 
achievement, in earnestness, diligence, and 
the spirit of sacrifice. 



AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 249 

Men speak of the failure of Civilisation. 
Yet it is not the failure, but the murder, of 
Civilization that we are witnessing. Men 
speak of the failure of the Church; but it is 
the crucifixion of Christ that we are see- 
ing. And so, whatever is attempted after 
the War must keep in view the grand, 
eternal, basic facts of a civilization still 
founded on righteousness, indestructible, 
though trampled in mire and blood; and a 
Christ whose throne is unshaken, though He 
Himself has been foully stricken in Chris- 
tendom. 

And again, men are speaking to-day too 
much from a point of view external and 
superior to the crowd whose streets they 
look down into, and to the soldiers of whom 
they know from books and vague impres- 
sions, without remembering that the crowd 
also have a point of view of keen criticism 
of existing institutions, and that the soldier 
has a mind and heart which will not always 
be under control of the drill sergeant; and 
that both will not only think and speak after 
the War, but may act also. It is a thinker 
that will return from the hard school of the 
trenches, not a child obedient to be fed with 
spoon-meat of conventional reform. It is, 



250 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

in fact, the nation that will come back— or 
rather what is left of it, sadly and sorely 
raked and riddled clear of very much of all 
that has been best within it; but thinking 
all the more on that account. Every type is 
there; and one size and shape and dosage of 
remedy and help and reform will not suit all. 

Yet, in a general way, one may forecast 
somewhat. 

In the offset, it is plain that life in the past 
has been too much shut off into air-tight 
compartments. The fireside life, the life of 
industry in all phases, the political sphere, 
the field of religion, have all had between 
them a deep gulf, though perhaps not so 
wide as it has seemed. The ethical ideal of 
one has not been the ethical ideal of the 
others. A man who would not dream of a 
questionable act or thought in his domestic 
circle has often been involved, without a 
blush, in shady affairs of trade and profes- 
sional business. The politician has not 
hesitated, over and over again, to stoop to 
a dodge for votes or popular applause, to 
subterfuge or polished falsehood for his 
party's sake, and still counted himself in 
among men of honourable life. Yet all, in 
the home and in the Church, have held by 



AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 251 

the highest codes of conduct that ReHgion 
has revealed to men. We have, in fact, for 
long, been forgetting that all life is one; 
that life is an organic whole, that the code 
of honour is the same in all its departments; 
that a man cannot be a Christian for a part 
of Sunday and leagues away from its plain 
elements through the week, without some 
damage to the moral fibre of his soul. 

It may be true that "business is business." 
It may be true that the sanction of a great 
politician is behind the statement that, while 
Christianity is our noblest institution, "it 
must not be allowed to interfere with the 
sanctities of private life." But the man 
who runs the business, and the man who 
conducts private life, so-called, is the same 
man who would be astonished if told that 
he stands up for measurement in all his 
activities against the one law of the honour 
of God. Not only is all life one, but all 
morality is one. 

So, after the War, that must be the very 
first guiding and compelling purport of 
social activity. Human life must be honest 
all through, and not in streaks. 

As for religion, we know how it is in 
fact to-day; how, bit after bit, its sphere 



252 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

has been invaded by so-called reformers, till 
parental control has been slackened, and 
the streets are crowded with irresponsibili- 
ties of youth, and youthful crime is all too 
common. And then, those who loosened the 
Church's hold on the guidance of the 
nation's life cry out, "What have the 
Churches been doing ?" You take away the 
sentries, and then complain when the camp 
is invaded! 

There are many suggestions as to how 
the Church should be improved after the 
War. "Fewer sermons; Shorter sermons; 
No sermons at all." What then? A pro- 
cession of imitation priests, and something 
gabbled out of a book? What a paradise 
for blockheads the Church would become, 
when it would be a disadvantage, greater 
even than it is to-day sometimes, for the 
pulpit to have brains in it! The Church is 
the Speaker of, and for, God, as well as the 
Speaker To God, — the Teacher of spiritual 
ethics, as well as the Guide in worship. And, 
in it, he who has no message to strengthen 
his people will have no thought to uplift 
them. And, again, you read that, after all, a 
preacher should cheer his congregation; 
should say nothing about sin or sorrow, 



AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 253 

But can a man shut his eye to evil, and close 
his mouth against it, and be a pacifist propa- 
gandist for a compromise with the devil, 
and yet be a man of God? The pulpit, with 
a living, fearless message, saved the world 
before our day. It spoke, with no uncer- 
tain voice, even to kings, instead of bowing 
to their vices, as well as to the commonest 
subject in the realm. Ragged men, hunted 
on the moors, did more to bring men to God 
and to a sense of their souls by the preach- 
ing of His truth than half the Assemblies 
and Committees of to-day. 

What the Church needs after the War is 
more of St. Francis than of Ignatius or 
Dominic, more of the minister and friend 
than the ritualistic priest, — in fact, a Christ 
liberated from bookish form and conven- 
tional ceremony. There is no difficulty in 
finding an awakening theme for His sake. 
The lesson of the wounds: of Calvary in 
France and Flanders and elsewhere; sur- 
render; sacrifice; fidelity; and hope: these 
are still in the old Book, overwritten as with 
a new pen of flame to-day. 

It is true that there are questions of better 
housing, and matters for the Sanitary 
Inspector; but the first question for the 



254 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

Church is the question of better homes. 
Are the homes of our land getting ready for 
the returning of the men who have looked 
life and death in the face, and have learned 
the big deep abysmal things that are behind 
the facts of the passing day? Are the 
homes getting ready? Will some of the 
brave men be goaded to violence and murder 
by the discovery of drunken and immoral 
wives, who have starved their children, and 
drunk the allowance that was the father and 
husband's blood-money — unless something 
be done to stop it now ? 

The men, out in the mud and discomfort 
of war, idealize their homes, even the poor- 
est of them. They forget the faults that 
sometimes saddened them there. They for- 
get their own faults. They think tenderly 
of home and wife and children. If they 
themselves have been careless, what a link 
to bind them to a better life is in this getting 
hearts and firesides clean for their return- 
ing! See that whatever darkens the flame 
on the hearthstone is removed, that the sol- 
dier's home may get a chance. 

Aftkr The: War should mean, if we be 
true, some things, at any rate, worth pray- 
ing for and beginning at: 



AFTER THE WAR— WHAT? 255 

Christ, not Presbyterian, nor popish, nor 
Episcopalian, nor Baptist, but the Son of 
God the Universal Father, suffering for 
all: the State, as a real part of the purpose 
of God, under whom, from the king to the 
beggar, all shall have a broad way of clean 
opportunity in wide brotherhood, freely 
open before him : humbug and dishonesty in 
Church and State, in politics and trade, 
quashed, and swept out, in the cleaning of 
the national life: Character and not Cash, 
Personality and not the accident of birth, or 
the skill of backstair creeping, and the art 
of corruption and wire-pulling, as the secret 
of successful manhood, and a place in the 
world's clean endeavour; a free chance for 
free men, who have bought freedom with 
their blood, to live a free clean life, in 
healthy homes, and in sobriety: and, God 
above, beneath, within, and around all. 

This is not a new creed, but much of it 
has been forgotten. Like the writing on a 
palimpsest, it is being revived by the blood 
that is being shed, on the page of hope that 
is before the heart of the soldier, out, to-day, 
in the mire and sorrow of the world's pain. 

That is my message from the Land of 



256 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

War. It is what we have been praying for, 
long time, yonder. 

Otherwise the best blood of our Empire 
has been shed in vain. And the battle may 
have to begin once more — it may be in our 
own land next time. Which God forbid ! 



THE BOYS 

Ah, 'tis lonesome in the homestead 

While the lads are far away ; 
And the hearts they've left behind them 

Can but quietly wait and pray, 
Keeping still the old lamp burning, 

And the latch loose on the door, 
For the welcome ones returning 

When the weary war is o'er. 

And the lads themselves are thinking 

Of the faces ever dear ; 
And Remembrance, in the darkness, 

Brings the loved ones very near; 
And the dismal hour of vigil 

Loses more than half its pain, 
For the thought, like prayer, within it. 

Of the coming home again. 

There are many softly sleeping. 

Who shall never more awake 
Till God's sudden trumpet sounding 

Shall upon their slumber break; 
But they'll leap to that revally. 

Ever faithful, brave, and true. 
And we'll see them stepping proudly 

In God's final great review. 

So in stillness of the evening, 
Or when stirs the call of day. 

To our God in highest heaven 
May our spirits ever pray, — 
257 



258 THE HEART OF A SOLDIER 

That He'll bring our boys back to us, 
When the time of pain is o'er, 

Or lead us, where they shall wait us, 
Clothed in victory, evermore. 

L. McL. W. 



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